7th and 8th Grade Humanities Expedition 2022
Throughout the first semester,our 7th and 8th grade History through Writing and History through Reading classes traveled to the present and past eastern hemisphere (E.H.). Our humanities classes began with a glimpse into the role of commodities (i.e. sugar and salt), which paved the way for descriptive and narrative writing workshops. During the first and second quarters, our case studies involved students studying the geography of the eastern hemisphere in terms of the five themes of geography (movement, region, human-environment interaction, location, and place) and the history of the regions (i.e. ancient Greece and ancient China). As our guiding questions (What impacts a society and how? How does geography influence culture? How does someone change the world?) paved the way through a variety of projects, such as an argumentative writing focused opinion editorial based upon the impact of social media with a statistical twist, as well as book clubs based upon such books as: Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin, The Last Fallen Star by Grace Kim, Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean, Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia, and Aru Shaw in the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi, our students were ready to jump into our final product.
With a focus on our last guiding question (How can someone change the world?) and elements of social media--How can social media change the world?--students incorporated this new knowledge and personal opinion into an eastern hemisphere inspired classic fable based upon a moral they felt was essential to be spread across social media. After completing the writing portion of the fables, students created their social media post with the ultimate goal of creating life-lesson/world changing stories that will be shared via social media. Ultimately, these final classic fables turned social media posts are meant to change the world by inspiring others to live a life reflecting the positive moral messages created by our PPSEL 7th and 8th graders!