Sorry for posting so late, I will get my schedule down and finish these before the school day is done.  Today we reviewed what culture is and learned one of the most important, and re-occurring, themes of the year...Cultural Diffusion.  We also began to discuss different types of questions, closed verses open questions.  Students will continue to work with this concept tomorrow and Thursday I will explain how we are going to link all of these individual concepts into our first project!

Homework tonight is to attach the Cultural Diffusion index card to the front of your social studies binder or folder.  Also students need to find the year that you were in 7th grade.  Or any relative, family friend..over the age of 28 please. 

Great first Monday!  Started talking about culture today.  Tomorrow we will finish that up and also add the concept of cultural diffusion.  Nohomework tomight.

Today we finished up the rules and procedures of 7A social studies.  Then we took some time to watch the video I embedded below.  It is from an old cartoon series and it lists all the countries in the world.  We will revisit this short clip occasionally when we talk about how we learn and how the world keeps changing (some of the countries don't exist any more).  Great first week of school, one of the best yet.  Students were engaged and curious, I hope they continue to grow and ask questions.  Next week we will start an introductory unit in which we will discuss the skills and methods historians need/use to do history.

Not too exciting in class today, but very important.  Today we started looking at classroom rules and procedures.  We will finish R&P tomorrow.

Below is a quick GoogleDocs survey.  Students submitted their answers to the question and I created a word cloud.  The picture to the left is the word cloud created by all my students.  You can see that students have several tools at their disposal to be successful this year!

Great first day.  Everyone made it to class on time and we had some great discussions.  Today we talked about what history really is, why it's important and ways we study history.  Students then used chalk and black paper to draw a blurry image that was projected on the board.  Tomorrow we will talk about how this exercise is related to the study of history.  Thank you students for a successful first day.

No homework tonight!

-Mr. Pennington

Welcome to the new school year!  This year will be an adventure; there will be challenges, great experiences and unique opportunities to learn in new ways. 

The class is called Ancient World History, but that is not a very accurate description of what we will discuss, study and learn.  Everything that has happened helped to create the modern world.  We will discuss current topics in the news, U.S. history, and how the ancient world influences us today.

Throughout the course of the school year students will have several unique opportunities to engage in what we are learning through technology.  We will Skype with students from Beachwood Middle School, blog, create web pages and use a variety of other free technology to making learning interesting and relevant to your (the students') lives.

I expect and encourage you to speak your mind!  Engage in debates, talk about tough issues and THINK.  Social Studies is a discussion-driven class.  We learn by organizing our thoughts, discussing, collaborating, and drawing conclusions.  Social Studies is not black-and-white; there is no single answer to the majority of the ideas we will discuss.  Don't be afraid to share what you think or to agree/disagree with your classmates.  The best part about having a mind, is being allowed to change it!

Garth Holman, my mentor and close friend, teaches at Beachwood Middle School and I completed my student-teaching in his class.  You will hear Mr. Holman's name often because the two of us collaborate and reflect about what we do as teachers.  We will also be allowing our student to work and learn together.  You will notice that he is also keeping a blog on this website.  Feel free to read what he has to say.  We are trying something new this year; we are going to attempt and align our curriculum so that our students can collaborate on a regular basis.  Garth and I have presented at several educational conferences, talked to major universities in the area concerning technology in education and have hosted several technology workshops for schools in the greater-Cleveland area.  We run a website,  where we reflect upon how we teach.  We also run a weekly web show that we use to connect with educators, technology experts and influential thinkers to discuss education.

Now the exciting stuff, me.  I'm not just a teacher, I have a life outside of school.  This is my fourth year at CMS and my fourth year teaching.  I completed my undergraduate studies at Lake Erie College.  After earning my B.A. in Social Science, I transferred to Cleveland State University and earned my M.A. in History.  I stayed at CSU to earn my teaching licensure, 7-12 Integrated Social Science.  Outside of the world of teaching, I am a husband and father.  My wife Christina works for Huntington Bank.  I have a step-son, Kyle, who is an eighth grader at Willoughby Middle School.  My daughter, Olivia, just turn 1 in August and has dad wrapped around her finger.  being a parent is awesome.  It also helps me be more empathetic as a teacher.  I understand that families are busy and that many times life is more important than school.  If issues arise that interfere with homework/school work, please email me.  Something can always be worked out! 

Many of your children, my students, know me because I ride a motorcycle (word travels quick in a small school).  One of my biggest passions is riding and working on motorcycles.  I escape to the garage to decompress after a long week. Every year Kyle and I ride out to Washington D.C. during the Memorial Day weekend to pay our respect to the soldiers of our country.  The event is called Rolling Thunder and honors the POW/MIA individuals that have fought for our armed forces. 

 I also love to take my family camping.  My dad was a teacher, so summers meant getting in the car and heading out West.  Sitting around the campfire, rock climbing and backpacking are passions that I try to keep going in my busy life.  Olivia has already slept in a tent and Kyle's grandpa taught him how to gut and clean a fish before he was 10.

I will post all day-today information on this blog, including homework.  If you ever have any questions, please feel free to call the school or email me: ch_penningto@lgca.org

Thank you for reading and I hope you, your children and myself can collaborate to make this a great school year!

-Michael Pennington