Week in Review

A very good week in class.

We have been learning the 8 Concepts to help us categorize our understandings throughout the year. We have discussed Economics, Governance, Conflict & Change, and Culture. We have also been learning to locate the countries of the Middle East (Southwest Asia).

On Wednesday, I had a meeting to analyze the new standards by being informed of the intent of the standards and going through "Teacher Notes" on each of the standards.

What made it such a valuable week was the viewing and follow-up discussion on the events of 9/11/01.

We watched a video from Discovery Education on Flight 93 - The Flight that Fought Back. We did not view the entire video, but nearly completed the 53 minutes of the documentary. It was Friday's discussion that made the week so valuable.

I put a Starter on the board for the students to think about before I led a closing series of thoughts on the events of 9/11 and how it relates to everything we had done so far this year.

The questions were these:

1. The terrorists objectives were the Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon, and the Capitol Building. What do these buildings symbolize in our country?
2. Why would these buildings be the targets?

Briefly, here was our synopsis:

The Trade Center Towers were located in not only the nations primary economic center (Wall Street - and the NYSE), but also the world. The Towers represented the economic power of the United States. These buildings were targeted in the early 1990s by a terrorist attack.



The Pentagon is the headquarters for our military and defense leaders. It is here that strategies are developed for national defense and military action.



The Capitol Building represents our government and is the location of our legislative branch of government.

These buildings house and represent three necessary entities for a strong nation; one capable of independence, freedom, and sovereignty...governance, economic stability, and military defense.

According to the plan, the terrorists tried to attack and disable all three of these entities within a span of 20-30 minutes. Flight 93 was late to take-off by around 45 minutes, and therefore did not reach it's target before the passengers uncovered the purpose of the hijack.

The terrorists, with cultural heritage from Southwest Asia and from an minority faction of Islam (radical as some would classify; following Sharia) planned to strike against the United States partly for their interaction in the affairs of Arab nations throughout Southwest Asia...Gulf War, humanitarian assistance in Northeastern Africa, and even in assisting Arab fighters in Afghanistan in the 1980s against the USSR.

My students (in two different classes) wondered if the terrorist pilots ejected from the planes before impact, since they knew they would die when they crashed. So we were able to discuss the aspects of beliefs and religion (very briefly and in a simplified manner) which fall under the concept of Culture we discussed a few weeks ago.

This single event in the history of our country is an indicator of more than half of we have to learn in 7th grade social studies. It has served as a great springboard. Yes, we simplified, but we have something from which to work.

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The content of Room 755 is the interpretation of the Georgia State Standards for 7th grade Social Studies, and how we seek to address these standards in one classroom, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the school system in which I work. This work (unless expressly stated) are licensed under a Creative Commons License Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.