Giada's Honors Human Geography Blog

   Today in class, we took a quiz on the five major world religions. I studied for it and in the beginning, I thought I was doing pretty well. However, I got to the back of the page, and there were questions that I do not think I got correct. At that point, I felt like I was kinda guessing on questions. This is because that information was not on Sam's quizlet we used to study from. I didn't think we needed to know which religions were the oldest, or which religions are abrahamic. I did not feel very good about it when I finished because I do not remember learning some of this information, especially because I missed class on Friday and only studied the powerpoint. I hope for the best, but I have a feeling I did not do too well :(

    I did not go to class today because I was on the Romero Service Club field trip. We organized, sorted, packaged, and delivered the cans from the canned food drive to churches. We took most of our cans to  Bel Air United Methodist Church and we also took cans to  St. Francis de Sales. In between this, we had lunch at Panera Bread! Anyways, I was very  happy that the churches appreciated our  donations:)

   Today in class, we finished going through the "five Major World Religions" powerpoint and taking notes. Last class, we learned about Christianity, and today we learned about Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. It was interesting to learn about different religions beside your own, and you get to see a different perspective of life of other people. Many things stood out to me, but one thing in particular was about Buddhism. There isn't a strict set of rules you must follow, it is more like a way to live your life from a view of philosophical points. Having this said, the part that stood out to me was that since there aren't strict rules/regulations, you could be part of a whole different religion and still practice Buddhism. This makes sense because if you are looking at it simply as a way of life, you could still follow their viewpoints. Two things they follow are The Four Noble Truths and The Eightfold Path. The Four Nobles Truths are (1.) There is suffering. (...

   Today in class, our tests were handed back to us. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I could've done better on it, but I did not do too bad. I got a 90%, and when our tests were handed back, I saw that I got four questions wrong. As I suspected, all four of these questions I got wrong were from the section with population pyramids with countries and statements with countries. I understand now where I went wrong and where I could have done better. I should've known my countries a little better, but that's okay. When we were done reviewing the correct answers to the test, we had an intro to our new unit! We will be discussing and learning about these five religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. We were informed that, since Thanksgiving break is next week, that we will have a test on the religions on Friday! However, we we over two of the slides in Mr. Schick's powerpoint that talked about Christianity and we all took notes. I do not have Human...

   Today in class, we took a test on our population/settlement unit again, but this one included more on population pyramids and countries. I felt confident doing the pages full of terms of the unit and I think I did good on that part. However, there was one section of the test, where I know that I did not do too well in. This part was the section which showed a population pyramid and you had to say which country out of the four it represented. There was also another part in this section where there were statements (dealing with terminology of our unit) of countries, and you had to say which country out of the four options it was. I did study and look over my notes, but I did not take notes on countries, and I simply did not remember some statistics. So, after class, I was a little nervous because I felt like I did an okay job and definitely got a few wrong. I checked my grade on Veracross, and I got a 90% on it! Although I could've done a better job on it, it's at least an a,...

   Today in class, we were informed that there will be a test on Monday dealing with more of our population/settlement unit. In order to review some informant information, we watched the Ted-Ed Population-Pyramids video again, and this time, it was much easier to understand, now that we learned all the terms/concepts. It shows how much we learned in this short amount of time and this video was very useful in taking good notes. I will need to review my notes and study them for the test Monday. After this, we watched Jeopardy because Mr. Schick watched a champions episode, where one of the answers was "what is an industrial nation?". Instead of just watching that one part of the episode, we watched the whole episode and it was really fun. I have never really watched a full episode of Jeopardy, but I've played it in my middle school as a review for tests, so I already knew how it worked. Mr. Schick told us that there was an episode on tonight at 7:00, and even though I turne...

   Today in class, my group presented our presentation to the class. As an individual working on my slide, I think I did fairly well. However, as a group I don't think we did as great as we could have. We just received a lot of questions from Mr. Schick and I think we could be more knowledgeable on our topics overall. At the end of class, Mr. Schick gave us a sheet of paper with everyones names. We had to circle our name, give ourselves a grade we think we deserve, and give our group members a grade we think they deserve. I gave everyone in my group a 98% because I think everyone in the group tried their hardest and tried to work on the slides either in class or at home. Everyone did their fair share (one person did one slide), and even though I feel like some slides went better than others, I think all of the slides came together well.

   Today in class, every group except mine presented their country slides. I think everyone tried to do well and, overall, they did well. While groups were presenting, I was looking at my presentation and making sure everything was correct and where it needed to be. My group added more pictures and made any necessary revisions. I think I mostly payed attention to the groups presenting, however I think I could have listened to them more. In the end, time ran out before my group could present, but when we do, I am confident that we will do well and I hope we get a good grade on it. Everyone in my group did their fair share of work and I am glad to see that they put in the effort.

   Today in class, we were assigned a new project that will be a speech /oral speaking assignment. We were first gathered into groups which we could not decide. Mr. Schick chose four "team captains" who then took turns choosing people from the class list paper (so that people wouldn't get offended if they were chosen last). There are about four or five people in each group and our task started by choosing two countries- one which is pre-developed and one which is post-developed. Now, we must research those countries (using the CIA World Factbook), find a problem in those countries, and give a possible solution to the problems. In my group, our pre-developed country is Tanzania and our post-developed country is Italy. We did not get much started today; we just made a google slides presentation, wrote a title, and put pictures of the countries on different slides. So far I think we're off to a good start, and I hope that my group will put in a lot of effort and focus in...

   Today in class, we had a little review on the unit we've been working on. My shadow was very involved in the conversation and answering questions. This was interesting to see because usually shadows don't participate as much. Anyways, Mr. Schick told us that even though our middle school teachers might have told us that using Wikipedia is terrible, he thinks that is a great source to use and that the information on it comes from many websites/articles. Mr. Schick told us that Wikipedia is a very thorough and a mainly accurate source to use, but would never be cited as a primary source on research because encyclopedias can never be a primary source for research!! Then, he talked about the struggles of writing research papers in college because he had to use a typewriter. If you forgot to add even one paragraph, you would have to re-write the whole thing. There was no such thing as going back and writing in something, because the typewriter was not digital. There also was no ...

1.) Egypt has an average of 38 internet users . I found this interesting because where we live, in the United States, using the internet is very, very common. In fact, the United States has an average of 246, 809, 221 internet users! It just seems strange to think that a country has 38 users when here in the United States, that number is much bigger. This statistic shows that Egypt may not be as developed as our country. 39.90% of children of the age of five in Yemen are underweight.  I found this interesting because there is a large amount of children who aren't getting enough food/nutrients to have a healthy BMI. This is sad because these children are so young and should be receiving what they need to be healthy. However, sometimes, countries like Yemen cannot provide it. This statistic shows that Yemen might have issues like not having enough food to feed the country, not having the money to get food for the children, etc. The Pitcairn Islands have no roadways.   I fou...

   Today in class, we took a pop quiz on the Hans Rosling video we watched last class. I did not do very good and I got a 7/10 :( This is because I should have listened to Mr. Schick when he said to convert the x and y axis terms on the graph (lifespan and income) into terms we learned in our unit. I did that for lifespan, by writing "life expectancy", but I did not write "GDP" for income. I also wrote down that "The Great Depression" was one of the tragic events that was mentioned in the video, but it was not. I forgot the last question I got wrong. However, this was a good learning experience, and it reminded me to pay attention to important information that is stated either in the video or by Mr. Schick. It also reminded me to listen to the directions that Mr. Schick provides us. In conclusion, this is not the start to the second quarter I was hoping for, but that is okay. Better luck next time.