Last Friday, the students took the test over Chapter 3, and with great success! Mr. Vandendberg, Ms Lytle, and I had decided that 70%, or a C-, would be the lowest grade we would accept as a passing grade. The students rose to the occasion, we had about 10% of ALL 6th graders who needed to re-test.
On Monday, the class started watching "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". Why, you're asking yourself, would the students watch that movie in Social Studies. I had talked with Ms Lytle about showing the "Golden ticket " portion of the movie as a wonderful example of "scarcity", but then decided the entire movie is actually about economics. There will be a big emphasis on economics and its vocabulary this year, so this movie is a great way to introduce many of the concepts in a "kid friendly" manner. The students have been asked to take notes during the movie, with focus questions about levels of industry (primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary), factors of production, and competition to name a few. Today the students will be asked to write a short response to a question based on the movie. We will refer to the movie as we move through our unit on Ecomonics, too.
We will be focusing on Economics until Christmas break. We will have a BIG, culminating project in which the students will be asked to work in a small group to create a country. The group will have to incorporate cutlural traits, geographical features, and a four level economic system. The kids have had fun witht this project in the past, but we will ask that the project be a little more "realistic" this year. We won't allow a country to have a GDP of $500,000,000,000,000. However, if such a country existed, I wouldn't mind living there for a couple of years!
There is no homework tonight :-)
Thanks,
Cathy
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