Congratulations guys - you have completed your historical writing pieces. What a massive project! You have done so well and can be really proud of the final pieces.
The students wrote either a story or an information report based round a time and place in their family history. It covers everything from cyclones in Canada, the Waikato wars, disastrous boat trips to NZ, Germany after the war, Scotland in the time of the barbarians, and many more.
They have been bound into a book and copies are now in the library and the classroom.
This week we explored what happens when two cultures live together. We had a scenario of a new village of 200 people being populated equally by two completely different cultures. The students then identified what they think would happen in that village within the first year, the first 5 years, and then how the village would look in 20 years time. It was fascinating to discuss how initial conflict would be strong but grow less over the 20 years. The cultures would blend together and the cultures would change, possibly creating a 'new' culture.
We then made the link to NZ as well as the blending of cultures worldwide. Are we becoming 'one culture' in our world? We started looking at globalization and will continue to do so next week.
It has been interesting looking into colonialism and just how widespread and how horrific it was at times. Today we looked at a map which showed the countries that colonized and the countries they colonized. We discussed how there is only certain information you can get from a map. It doesn't tell us what colonization was actually like. We then looked at a number of photos and artwork from the time of colonialism. We were then able to get a much better understanding of what it was like. The students identified things the photos revealed about colonialism.
Last week the students identified a number of things that have bought major change to the world in the last 200 years. Over the next term we will look at various aspects of the things the students identified. Today we had some fascinating discussion around which ones had the most impact. The students had to order the things by their level of impact on the world. It was interesting to discover how many things depended on each other for the change. Technology relies on factories, factories rely on electricity, the internet relies on the space race, etc. There were lots of different opinions and the challenge was to justify your opinions. Here is an example of one groups ordering:
We also watched the video clip below and discussed the message of the creator. It was fascinating to think about the assumptions people make about other people by their looks. Often people try to make connections with others but may make incorrect assumptions in the process.
We also looked at why English is the most influential language in the world. This led into looking at colonialism and its role in changing our world. We will look later this week at the results of tow cultures living together.
Congratulations guys - you have completed your historical writing pieces. What a massive project! You have done so well and can be really proud of the final pieces.
