Population Pyramid

In class, we watched the population pyramid video again and talked about it. A population pyramid measures the percentage of people living in a country according to gender and age. If a pyramid is wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, the population is growing rapidly and people are having kids at a very fast pace. Later on, the same pyramid will be wider at the top, and narrower at the bottom because all the kids from the baby boom aren't having as many kids when they get older. There are a large amount of them but not as many of their children. The last thing we talked about was the 3 eras that countries have been through. There was pre-industrialization , industrialization, and post-industiralization.

Substitute

Today, Mr.Schick wasn't there so we did the work that he left us on his blog. We were supposed to watch a video called "population pyramids" and complete the questions we were given. Some of us had to watch the video with no sound because we didn't have headphones and if we finished we studied or did work for another class. One thing I learned in the video, is that Russia has the same total population as Nigeria. This was surprising because Russia has the largest territory in the world and Nigeria is only 1/16th it's size. Another interesting thing I learned, is that the population pyramid can predict future population trends. It's crazy that there are about 271 people born each minute and that about 106 die every minute. It would be impossible to know how many people exactly are in the entire world.

Duck and Cover

Today in class, we started off by looking at the website on the countries again. We had some classmates go up and talk about some of the countries hey looked at and show us some facts. We looked at the U.S and we also looked Antarctica . We learned that Syria is at the bottom of the list and thousands of people are leaving there and going to Lebanon which was at the top of the list. So many people are leaving Syria that is has a negative number next to it. After we did that, we talked about how when Mr. Schick was younger, they used to do drills incase another country bombed them. The had to go in the basement of the school and sit silently while they were curled in a ball covering their heads. He told us that people used to be terrified of it and they didn't even know if it was a drill or not sometimes. To end class, he showed us a video that was called "Duck and Cover" about those drills. It told you to duck and cover and if you did that you would be safe. If you were outside you had to get to the nearest building or duck down against a curb. We thought it looked sort of funny but it wasn't back then.

Life Expectancy

Today, we talked about life expectancy , crude birth/death rate, net migration, immigration, emigration and more. Life expectancy is the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year. Crude birth rate is the number of births per 1,000 people and crude death rate it the number of deaths per 1,000 people. Net migration is the difference between the number of people leaving or entering a country during a year. Net immigration is the number of people entering the country  and net emigration is an excess of people leaving a country. After we talked about this, we went to www.cia.gov and looked at statistics for Mexico. The net migration rate used to be more than -3 for 1,000 population and now it's -1.64. The number of people leaving Mexico has gone down dramatically. I looked at some other statistics for Mexico and noticed some other things. The infant mortality rate is 12.58/1,000 live births. This has probably gone up from what it was a couple of years ago. The average life expectancy is 75.43 and this is only a few years under the United States.

Test day

Yesterday in class, I had to take my test because I left early on Wednesday. I got to use my blog which was helpful and I think I did pretty good on the test. Mr. Schick made me drag a desk in the hallway so i could sit out there to take it. The test took about half the class so when I finally came back inside, we were talking about life expectancy. The life expectancy in the U.S is higher today than it used to be because they didn't have good medicines like we do now. We also learned that the flu used to kill millions of people. Today, the flu isn't thought about as dangerous anymore because we have medicines. Another thing we learned about id infant mortality. This is a measure of how many kids die before their first birthday. We looked at the rankings for countries and life expectancy and the U.S is #50. After this, it was time to leave.

Absent

Today, I wasn't in class class because I left early for a dentist appointment.

flashcards

Today in class, we had a substitute because Mr. Schick was at a meeting. The sub was dressed up as daphne from Scooby Doo which everyone thought was pretty cool. We studied basically the whole class because we have our test tomorrow that we need to study for. We were allowed to work in partners as long as we were quiet so I worked with Leigh and Kacey. We went on the website that Mr. Schick put on his blog and made flashcards and then we studied them. I put all the questions from my notes I took yesterday. I think a day to study helped get me read for the test a lot better than just studying at home because someone else quizzed me and if I didn't know something, I made sure i remembered it. After we studied it was time to leave.

Test review

Today in class, Mr.Schick had us review for the test. He asked us to come up with some good test questions that he would use if he liked them. Some of the class's ideas were used and some weren't. We took notes about all the things that will be on the test and he explained to us why true and false questions are bad on a test. Even the most intelligent kids get true or false questions wrong and it doesn't really show the teacher what the student knows. We went over a message to Garcia and I wrote down that it was written my Elbert Hubbard, it is teaching that people who are responsible and reliable are more wanted in business, and it took place in the Spanish - American war. We also went over elements of globalization and how english became the international language of business. To end class we talked about all the new inventions being made and the ones that are likely to exist in the near future.

Globilization

Today in class, we talked about globalization, which is the connection of different parts of the world. It results in the expansion of international, cultural, economical, and political activities. We also talked about how Japan. It has lots of american businesses because almost everyone knows english so they are internationally connected. Mr. Schick had us check our notebooks, tags, and shoes and we found out that almost everything in America is made from China or some other part of the world like Thailand. China has lots of factories and their air is polluted. Back in the 1st century BCE, there was a trading route called the silk road. Only China could make silk because they were the only ones with the material so there were roads to and from China that people used to trade. To end class we talked about how BCE which means before the common era is used more commonly than BC.

Facts

Today in class we looked at a video called "Did you know?". It had a bunch of facts in it about how things were before vs. now and population. One thing that surprised me was when the video said "China will soon become the number one english speaking country in the world". This was surprising because it's weird to think that a country who speaks another language, could speak our language better than us. But they soon will because their population is bigger than us and most of them are learning english as a second language. Another fact that surprises me is that " 1 in 8 couples married in the U.S last year, met online". All these people met online and a couple years ago the internet wasn't even invented yet. If the internet hadn't been discovered, half of the married couples wouldn't have even even met. The last thing that is surprising is "if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest (behind China and India)". The internet has become so important to our daily lives that there are more people using it than are in lots of countries. The world has changed, and will continue to change and grow in so many ways.

Updated vocabulary

Agora- The central meeting place for people in Greek city-states. It is used for sports, artistic, and spiritual gatherings.
Arete - excellence of any kind or moral values.
Polis - The structure of a community in Ancient Greece. It can also mean body of citizens.
508 BC - This is the year that a democracy was created and some people were allowed to vote using stones.
Socrates - An ancient Greek philosopher who was credited as one of the founders of western philosophy. He tried to get others to think for themselves.
The death of socrates - Socrates was charged with corrupting the youth and criticizing the greek gods. He admitted to these crimes and even though given the opportunity to escape, stayed to accept his punishment. He was sentenced to death and forced to drink a mixture of hemlock
The socratic method - A form of discussion and inquiry based on asking and answering philosophical questions to stimulate thinking

    

About ancient Greece

Agora- The marketplace in Athens that is used for popular meetings and other things like a popular meeting place.

Arete- Excellence of any kind

Polis- normally used to indicate the ancient greek cities of states

the year 508 BC- A year of the pre-Julian calendar . It was known as the year of consulship of Poplicola and Tricipitinus

Socrates- A greek philosopher who was credited as one of the founders of western philosophy 

The death of socrates- A painting done by Jacques-Louis David in 1787

The socratic method- A form of inquiry and discussion between individuals based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and illuminate ideas

If the ancient Greeks called you an idiot, they actually mean that you were a person lacking professional skill

Wikipedia

Voting

In class today, we talking about a Message to Garcia some more. We talking about what the author was really trying to say and how to be a reliable person. We learned that the message to Garcia is a metaphor and that it really means humans have gotten lazy but Rowan is a person that all humans should strive to be like. When the author wrote a Message to Garcia, the internet wasn't invented yet. Everyone wanted to read this book and copies started being made so it could be sold. Even businesses bought it so that they could show what they wanted in an employee. To end class, we talked about voting. We learned that the legal voting age used to be 21 but it was changed because they believed 18 year olds had the right to make these decisions. Even though people this young can vote and have this freedom, most choose not to use it.

Week two

Today in class we started off by catching some people up on the mistakes they made on their blog. Some people were making separate blogs instead of separate posts in one blog. After they fixed that, we talked about some of the stuff on the blog and how to locate things on Mr.Schick's blog. we also talked about how he did the ALS ice bucket challenge and donated money. He said we could do it for homework and post a video on our own blogs if we wanted to. To end class we went on our own blogs and put links on the side. It was really confusing but I figured it out.We also talked about what mini - mod night is where parents come to the school and go around to all their kids classes so they can meet all the teachers and see what the classes are like.