The Scramble for Africa

The strategy that my group and I used was to first claim the resource rich areas of West Africa, which was our objective area. After we completed this we continued to claim more parts of Africa aside from the west that had valuable resources. We also tried to determine the objective areas of other countries, and we tried to claim that and instead of them. One factor we considered was to claim areas where there was enough of a population to provide labor. It is a very close finish between GB and France, but I think that France won due to our claiming of areas that were very rich in raw materials, and we covered almost all of our objective area. Spain lost this game. The area that Spain claimed is very scattered, and the main area that Spain claimed has essentially no natural resources.

5 Themes

Movement - The movement of people or ideas. (p. 138) In this part of the story the people of Umuofia see a white man and a bicycle for the first time. The white man and the bicycle both moved to Africa from other places.

Region - A group of countries sharing things in common. (p. 105) This part of the story is about a group of villages that are all along a pathway that Okonkwo's village is on. These villages are a region.

Human-Environment Interaction - The way humans come into contact with the environment. (p. 69) There is a passage on this page explaining that the men of Umuofia get their palm wine from tapping the palm trees.

Location - Where something is. Can be relative or absolute. (p. 209) A missionary living with Okonkwo's people writes a book telling us that the village of Umuofia is most likely located in Nigeria.

Place - What it is like at a given location. (p. 36) Yams are very important in the village of Umuofia. The new year is even centered around the harvesting of yams.

Political Cartoon

The main visual element of this is definitely the octopus arms. Other elements include the fat face of a man and his top hat. The issue is about England's imperialism over much of the world, and how they are in these countries unrighteously. The author is against imperialism, because he shows the man symbolizing england as a monster of some sort. He may also believe that England is getting rich from what they are taking from these countries. This is shown by the top hat of the man and how he is fat, again symbolizing that he is rich. I think that the cartoonist could have used more interesting color to emphasize some of his main points. In terms of C.R.A.P. the author created good alignment horizontally and vertically, used repetition in the octopus arms, and it is hard to tell about the proximity but the octopus arms are all coming from the face.

Violence

From examples in Julius Caesar and events in the world today it is easy to see that violence does lead to more violence. In Julius Caesar a group of traitors assassinate Caesar. This in turn leads to the murder of innocent Romans and a war between Antony and conspirators. In the end Cassius and Brutus die. One violent act led to all this. In the real world there are also acts of violence that lead to more violence. One example is the terrorist attacks on the world trade center in New York City. This led to an invasion of Afghanistan and a conflict with the Taliban.

Reflection on Leadership

There are a few qualities that leader must have, and I think one is authority and command. A leader must be assertive when making judgment. A leader must also show respect and tolerance for the people that they lead. They must realize that people will make mistakes, and they must be able to deal with that. Lastly, I think that leaders should be intelligent and just. They should be able to have strategies planned to protect the people they lead and they should be fair and unbiased when judging social matters between people.
I think that a good example of a student leader in 8th grade is Avi Singh. He is always friendly to everyone and I think that anyone could talk to him if they needed to. He is in SLAMS and makes many decisions for our grade.

PT Conference Blog

MY BEST WORK

I think that my best work in humanities was on my Industrial Revolution project descriptive piece. It was written from the point of view of an employee of Henry Ford. I worked hard on this piece and I had to know many facts before I could write it convincingly. My final grade for the descriptive piece was a 96%, only one point away from a 100%.

DESCRIPTIVE PIECE

Dear Diary,

He’s a saint! Am I dreaming? Today this heaven-sent manager announced his bold new idea. Most likely the best words I have ever heard from a man in all my life! Henry Ford announced today that he has increased our daily salary from the minimum wage of $2.39, to $5.00! I could not have asked for anything better. We barely had enough money to eat at night with the terribly low salary of $2.39. He even added that we will only be working 40 hours per week now! The thought of it makes even this cold January day seem warm as a summer afternoon. This kind of income is the kind that makes it possible for me to support my wife, my six kids, and myself, with enough money for comfort. Oh, I know, I shouldn’t be all that excited yet, but I just know this is the start of something great!

CHALLENGE

One thing I will work on for quarter two is my socratic seminars. I will prepare better and speak more, while also bringing people into the conversation. Our next socratic seminar is for Industrial Revolution and I think I will be able to speak well in this session.

WoW Flashback

“Week Without Walls” was a beneficial experience for all of us. We were able to try new things that we may not have been comfortable with at first. Many of us had never rafted, jumped off a cliff, or swam in a river before WOW. WOW should continue to be an 8^th grade experience for years to come. Here are some reasons why I think that.

I was totally relieved of all stress on WOW. There wasn’t a single moment where I was concerned with homework or school. We just got to do what we wanted and relax sometimes. This made it easy to be friendly and respectful to our peers also. It was hard to have a negative attitude on a trip that was so great. I am coming back to school feeling very refreshed now.

I learned a lot about India and Hinduism on this trip also. We were taught yoga on the beach which was a way to see how many Indian people live. We also visited Rishikesh, a holy city of Hinduism. People go there to seek peace and to bathe in the holy river Ganga, or Ganges as we know it. It is believed in Hinduism that when you bathe in the Ganges all your sins are washed away, and you become pure. It was interesting to learn about the culture and religion of people.

My last and most important reason is that WOW is FUN! It simply can not be beat by any other school trips. I have never heard of people that get to visit a river and go rafting for a week. This was one of the best trips I have ever taken, and the fact that I was with my friends made it even better. I never felt sad or down at all during the trip, even when we did journals!

I hope for the sake of all 8^th graders in future years that WOW continues to happen.