Alex's Western Civilization Blog

Today in class we took our quiz on the five religions. I think that I did a good job of studying, and I should pass the test. Sam's quizlet was very helpful, and I learned the information a lot more efficiently than if I just reviewed the powerpoint. For the test, all we had to do was match the religion to each statement. It was a 25 question test, and it was pretty easy, except there were four questions that weren't on the quizlet, or in the powerpoint, so I'm not sure how I did on those questions. We probably talked about those questions during the class where we took notes on the five religions, but I was absent that day so I didn't get that information. Hopefully, I got all of the other answers right so those four questions don't bring my grade down too much. After the test, we were able to write our blogs. Today there was a special bell, so the class was only 45 minutes today.

Today in class we reviewed what we learned about the five religions that we are going to be tested in the next class. Mr. Schick told us that the test would be a 50 point test where we have to name what religion each question is describing. This should be a pretty easy test if you pay attention and review the powerpoint. To prepare us, Mr. Schick put Sam's quizlet on the board and we went through the flashcards. He should show us the questions, and we would have to state which religion it came from. Sam is going to post her quizlet on her blog so we can all have access to it. Studying her quizlet should be an easy way to ace the test because it has everything on it. I think that I should do pretty well on this test, the only thing is that I missed the class where we took notes about all the religions, so I am going to have to learn about them on my own, which shouldn't be too difficult because of I can look at Mr. Schick's powerpoint and use Sam's quizlet. After we revi

I was late to school today and missed class, so I don't know what we did in class today.

Today in class we reviewed our population test. I got an 83 on my test, which dropped my grade down by a few percentages. I feel like I probably could've reviewed my terms a little more thoroughly, but I think that I tried pretty hard on this test. When we reviewed the test, I didn't feel like I would've known the answers to the questions I got wrong, so that probably means that I need to listen a little more carefully in class, and take better notes. Most of the parts that I got wrong were about population terms. I struggled with this part on the last test too, I think it's because I get easily confused with some terms because they sound similar or have similar meanings. Mr. Schick told us that our exam is one day and four weeks from today. I will definitely prepare myself better than I have been with the last few assessments. I will probably make a quizlet or some flashcards so I can really memorize those definitions. After the test review, Mr. Schick told us that we

Today in class we took a test on population. Mr. Schick gave us the first ten minutes of class to study for the test. I reviewed my notes and looked at one of my previous population quizzes. I felt like we have been learning about this unit for so long and have taken a bunch of quizzes on it, so I felt like I should do pretty well on the test. The test was 40 multiple choice questions that we took on a scantron sheet. I felt like knew some of the answers on the first page, but some of the questions I felt like I had some of my definitions mixed up. The page after that was a little easier. The next part of the test was matching population pyramids with their countries. I knew the first two countries, but I didn't remember the last one, so I tried to make a logical guess. There was another section where we had to match countries with facts about them, and I felt that that one was pretty easy too. The rest of the test was more questions relating to population. I think that I found tho

Today in class we rewatched the Ted-Ed population pyramid video and watched Jeopardy. We rewatched the video because Mr. Schick thought that we would understand it more now that we know a little more about population pyramids. He told us take notes if we didn't have good ones already, and I already had all of the important parts written down except that men are always on the left and women on the right, so I just wrote that down and watched the video. I did think that I understood it better now knowing what population pyramids are and how to read them. He told us that we are going to have label some population pyramids on our test on Monday. Our test is going to cover population, migration, and pyramids. I will definitely make sure that I fully prepare myself for this test. After that, we watched Jeopardy and Mr. Schick would pause it after each question so we could try to answer them ourselves. This was challenging, but a few people were able to get some questions.  We watched an

Today in class we watched the last presentation for the country solution project.  The last group talked about Italy and Tanzania. They had a lot of information on their powerpoint, and they did a pretty good job. After that Mr, Schick had given everyone in our group a grade. I think that we all did our work and there was no one that didn't do it anything or someone that did it all. I have my three group members 94s because they all did a good job on their slide, but they could've done a little more research. They all got the same grade because they all did their fair share of work. I gave myself an 89 because I did my work, but when we presented I didn't do very well, and my solution turned out to be inaccurate. I would've given myself the same grade as them if my information on my slide was correct because I spent as much time as them on my project, it just didn't turn out as good. I think that for the most part, we used our time wisely, but on the first day, we c

Today in class we presented our country solution projects. We were the second group to go. I presented my slide on the solution for Yemen's lack of water problem. After presenting my solutions which were to save water and monitor rainfall patterns, Mr. Schick told me that these solutions wouldn't work in Yemen because their water is not clean enough to do that, and this would only work in the first world countries. He asked me what the annual rainfall is in Yemen and Gabby found that it is 5 inches, which is about how much rain we get in a month, so they are in a drought. After presenting our project, I realized that I should have researched a little further into my solutions and thought about the factors that wouldn't allow these solutions to work. The website I used was based out of Philly, so I should've realized that it probably wouldn't apply to Yemen. I don't think that we will do as well on our project as we wanted, but now I know to research further into

Today in class we worked on our country solution project. My group decided to give each person one slide to work on in our google slide. The first slide was about Canada's problems, the second was about our solutions to the problems, the third is about Yemen's problems, and the fourth was about our solutions to the problems. We had a lot of trouble with finding a problem for Canada because it is a pretty stable country, so Mr. Schick told us that that's what we can talk about for that slide. My slide was the one about the solutions to Yemen's problems. The main problem we wrote about for Yemen is the lack of clean water. Two solutions I wrote about were recycling water and improving their sewage systems. You can recycle water by using shower buckets and rain barrels. You can also conserve water by saving cooking, bathing, drinking, and greywater instead of discarding it, a little goes a long way. They can improve their sewage systems by using chemicals that aren't t

Today in class we picked groups for the new project we are doing. For the project each group will choose two countries, one developing and one post-industrial, and we have to find a solution to one of their main issues. To choose groups, Mr. Schick chose four people to go upfront and choose from a list of our class and make groups. They chose groups in secret so we wouldn't know the order of who they picked. Mr. Schick decided to do it this way so no one would have to worry about getting picked last. I ended up being in a group with Charlotte, Maddie, and Reagan. I'm happy with my group because I'm friends with all of them and I think we'll do a good job. Choosing groups took up a lot of class time, but once that was finished we got into our groups and found our countries. It took us a little while to choose our countries because we couldn't really think of any countries off of the top of our heads. After a few minutes of looking through the world factbook, we decid

Today in class we reviewed the terms from our population and settlement unit. At the beginning of class, Mr. Schick told us that he was thinking about giving us a pop quiz but decided against it because he didn't want us to bomb them and have to explain to our parents why we are failing quarter two during is parent-teacher conferences. So instead of a pop quiz, Mr. Schick just asked us the questions from the quiz and had us answer them out loud. Some of the questions included birth and death rates, net migration rates, life expectancy rates, and population questions. Pretty much everything we talked about was on our population and settlement test. I was asked a question about net migration, and whether the country had a positive or negative migration rate. I got the question wrong because I had not been paying attention and I didn't know I was being called on. At the end of class, Mr. Schick told us the date of our final exam, which is right before Christmas Break. Mr. Schick a

Today in class Mr. Schick needed some time to grade some assignments, so he gave us a 10 point population assignment in class. CIA World Factbook Assignment: 1) Burkino Faso has an unemployment rate of 77%, this being the highest unemployment rate in the world. This relates to our studies because we learned that unemployment can be a big push factor for a country. 2) Angola has a birth rate of 43.70/1000 population, and this is the highest rate in the world. Angola is an African country and we learned that they don't have access to all of the things we have like birth control to stop pregnancies, so they have more. This means that Angola's population should be rapidly increasing. They should have a pre-industrial population pyramid. 3) Syria has the highest net migration rate in the world. Its rate is 57/1000 population, and the second-highest rate is 16.1/1000 population. This means that Syria's net migration rate is at least more than three times bigger than every ot

Today in class we took a quiz on the Hans Rosling video that we watched. The video contained a graph that showed the life expectancy rate and GDP per capita of all of the countries in different years. In 1810 the life expectancy rate for every country was under 40 years of age. The high of all of the countries is Luxemburg, and the low of all of the countries is Congo. The quiz was 10 questions and was worth 10 points. I was absent last class so today was my first time seeing this video, but I feel like I did pretty good on the quiz. The only questions that I didn't know were the causes of a decrease in the global population. After we finished our quiz, we passed our papers to the person in front of us and they graded it for us. We went through answers by going through the test powerpoint and answering the questions out loud. I think that I got a 9/10 on the quiz, and I'm happy with that, especially with the fact that I wasn't there yesterday. Today there was a community be