Dec. 1st - Dec. 5th

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a restful Thanksgiving weekend. This week in World History we are concluding our study of Africa. On Monday, students finished notes on the empire of Ghana and answered summarizing questions. These questions were completed during class - or must be finished as homework. The questions were:

1. What difficulties did people encounter when moving goods across the desert?

2. How did the region of Ghana come to be known as Ghana?

3. How did Ghana’s king help the empire become wealthy and powerful?

4. How did trade affect West Africa’s religion and culture?

5. What advantage did Muslims have that helped them gain influence in Ghana?

6. How did Ghana’s wealth and power lead to its downfall?

In addition to these questions, students were given a vocabulary homework sheet for their binders that is due tomorrow.

Tomorrow - Tuesday the 2nd, students will be learning about the empires of Mali and Songhai - the empires that followed Ghana. On Wednesday we will conclude our study of these empires and conduct a "gallery walk" of the important leaders and subjects. On Thursday students will participate in a team review game in preparation for a short quiz to end our unit on Africa.

Our weekly assignment, due Friday, is a compare and contrast sheet on the empires of West Africa.

On Friday students will be introduced to Mesoamerica and the Olmec culture.

And finally, a few quick notes

- the Turkey Bowl will be played on Wednesday the 3rd.
- 15 week progress reports will be sent out in the next week or so
- State assessments in History will take place sometime next week, I will give more information when it becomes available to me.