How Farming Changed Society

Civilization-usually refers to societies that obtain all their food needs from farms. Below are some definitions from the dictionary.  

 "the act or process of civilizing, as by bringing out of a savage, uneducated, or unrefined state, or of being civilized"

"the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced"

1. How might the above common definitions for civilization be ethnocentric? 

2. What is the general difference in opinion in the 2 movie clips about how agriculture changed society?

Try your hand at Early Farming

The Start of Agrarian Societies

The advent of agriculture changed how people lived. It is widely believed that this change started in Mesopotamia, the site of modern day Iraq, and is often called the Cradle of Civilization and the Fertile Crescent. Look at the map of the Fertile Crescent. Many parts of the world, such as where we live, is good farming land. The huge advantage that Mesopotamia had was access to crops and animals that can be easily farmed and domesticated.

Consider some of the crops and animals that they had access to and what this meant to changing their lifestyle from a hunter and gatherer to a farmer.   

Like where we live, ancient farmers in Mesopotamia had to deal with flooding and drought. They came up with an interesting solution. Click here and try your hand at being a Mesopotatmia farmer. 

It all started when . . .

Civilization is a word with loaded meanings. Often the word is used to describe societies that are agriculturally based. To get a sense of timelines and the passage of history, answer the following questions. This link might help you and this link has some good graphics, but the dates are a little earlier than most would agree with.  Blog the answers below:

1. As a review, see earlier blog posts if you need help, where are the earliest Homo Sapiens (us)  remains found and how old are those remains.

2. Review again, when did people take the Great Leap forward and what was that leap. (hint, if you don't get this, you too might have to go back 50,000 years hehehe)

3. What climatic event had to end for agriculture to begin?

4. What materials did people, Homo Sapiens, need to start agriculture?

5. About when did agriculture start?

6. Is agriculture the domestication of plants, the domestication of animals, or . . . ?

7. How did agriculture affect ones lifestyle?

8. How does agriculture lead to specialization?

9. What is specialization (asked the grade 8 Manitoba Social Studies teacher)?

10. What happened to equality in societies dependant on agriculture, like ours?

Early People

Use the following links and complete your handout note frame. Note frame to be competed is also posted below

Journey of Mankind (open in Chrome, neat site)

Timeline of Human Evolution (going way, way back)

When Homo sapiens (People) first Appeared 

Nearly Wiped out

Great Leap Forward

Height of last Ice Age

Ice Age ended

Agriculture as a lifestyle (civilization)

Theory of Evolution

The Theory of Evolution, first put forth in a book by Darwin called On the Origin of Species, is all about species changing because of adaptations they make to adjust to the environment. The theory also states that besides changing, some species die off because they weren't able to make the adaptations necessary.  There are theories that this happened to the Neanderthals; that they couldn't adapt to the increasing coldness of the Ice Age and/or adapt to the encroachment of homo sapiens upon their territory. The process of making adaptations and surviving or failing to adapt and dying off is called Natural Selection.

This is a theory. Proof is used in Mathematics and Philosophy, but isn't a scientific term. Science is the process of gathering evidence, forming predictions, and then testing those predictions. The theory of Gravity is an example. From the understanding of this theory, scientist are able to send a space probe over 6 billion Kilometres into space and land, safely, on a comet reaching speeds higher than 130,000 km/h

Timeline based on you

Notes from last Class
A.D.-is latin and literally translates into "year lord" meaning year of the lord or in his domain. It denotes years since the birth of Jesus Christ
B.C.-is used to mean years before the birth of Jesus Christ
C.E.-means common era and is sometimes used instead of A.D.
B.C.E means Before Common Era and is sometimes used instead of B.C.
B.P. is sometimes used for things that happened long, long ago, like dinosaurs. It means Before Present.
No year Zero in history
1-100 is the 1st Century
101-200 is the 2nd Century
2017 is the 21 Century
1919 is in the 19 hundreds
476 is in the 4 hundreds

Talked about 1st class

History

Prejudices, Biases

Western History

You are ready to do the assignment below when you can explain to the teacher what makes him cringe about this song




Time Line

Using photoshop, or the other programs shown by the teacher, or doing it by hand, create a timeline. Be sure to include graphics and have the timeline easily readable. HINT, HINT, Do a rough copy first!!!!

-Have the year of your birth as your starting point. Remember, there are no 0 years on a timeline.

-Have at least 3 dates from before you were born

-Have at least 3 dates after you were born

-Have at least 10 dates

-Have at least 4 dates that have no personal connection to you
The dates must all be referenced by when you were born. The math for this would be (Year of event)-(year you were born)+1
Marked out of 15. 10 proper dates, some type of BCE-CE, graphics (links?), and ease of reading.

A review of the math-example for 9/11  year of birth 2003-2001+1= year 3
-example for the 2015 federal election 2015-year of birth 2003+1= year 13

Year of your birth is marked by two 1s

NB-Keep the timelines neat, keep the timeline proportional or use a squiggly line.

Course Outline

Grade 8 Language Arts and Social Studies

Materials needed-

-Writing utensils 

-Paper

-A binder divided into several sections

-A writing notebook, which could be a notebook, duotang, or scribbler. Not a binder.

-A library card. 

Course Outline for Language Arts

Communication skills are essential and ever changing in our society. With the understanding that all students can be successful learners, students in 6A will be exploring a wide range of how language works, making full use of a modern computer lab. Over the course of the year, we will incorporate the Grade Eight Social Studies curriculum in our Language Art activities. 

           

The provincial curriculum uses the activities of Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, Viewing and Representing to develop the outcomes (skills) that students are expected to acquire. 

Grade 8 ELA Essential Learning Outcomes
Reading and Responding ·         understands key ideas and messages ·         interprets a variety of texts ·         responds critically to a variety of texts	Writing ·         generates, selects, and organizes ideas ·         chooses language to have an impact on reader ·         uses conventions and resources to edit and proofread
Communication ·         uses oral and visual strategies for effective communication ·         listening, speaking, viewing, representing	Managing Ideas and Information ·         Research skills (create and follow a plan, use graphic organizers to record information) ·         Organizing information (categorizing, comparing/contrasting, sorting/classifying)

 More details about the curriculum can be found here 

and here 

Course Outline for Social Studies

The Provincial Curriculum is here. The course is about 200,000 years of history, so during the year we won't be going into great depth on any particular time period. What will be important is understanding the trends and patterns that exist throughout history. The four main outcomes for Social Studies in Manitoba and what we will be focusing on during the school year are:

1. Communication
2. Managing Ideas and Information
3. Critical and Creative Thinking
4. Democratic Citizenship

The first two outcomes are important skills to have as the student moves through school and life. The last two skills are vital to produce the kind of society we want to live in and avoid something like this or to deal with this before it is too late.

As we jump from one period of history to another, the class will be asked for their interests and class lectures and activities will be tailored to those interests. During the year we will also be making use of project based learning so that the students can focus on parts of history that they find to be the most interesting.

Much of the course can be described as the history of the Western World. Western thought, customs, religion, etc was predominant in the creation of Canada and remains a dominating influence and point of view in our country. What we have to remember is that other points of view exist and that before Europeans came to Canada, the people here had their own religion, own system of government, a process to educate their children, languages, etc. 

This iTunes U course is a supplement to the actual course, which is delivered in class and on this blog. Supplemental links can also be found here. 

Some points to consider as we start our course:

What is History? Who makes it? Who writes it? How has it affected our country, The province we live in, Our city, YOU? 

Here is the class Edmodo Code hw7vt6

Here is the kidblog  code pvw4vy3

Cole C

You should really be doing you grade 9 work!!!!!!

History Scavenger Hunt

See how you do on this history scavenger hunt.

Only people who win the Stanley cup are allowed to lift it over their heads. How did the tradition of champions lifting it up start?

How did the word ‘football’ come to describe two very different sports? In that answer you might also find the origin of the word 'soccer.'

How did the Grey cup and the Stanley cup get their names? Who were the cups supposed to be awarded to? The answer to the Grey cup question is related to how football started to be called soccer.

Why is this area called St. James? hint, a building south of Polo Park

Why are stores who take a day or evening off most likely choose Sunday day or evening? Except for dine in restaurants, they are often open Sunday evening.

What connection can you draw between pogroms and the Human Rights museum in Winnipeg?

"Portage Avenue is the widest thoroughfare in Canada" Why is the street so wide and how did it get its name?

The Dakota uprising (more than 500 settlers killed), the Battle of Little Big Horn (the 7th Calvary completely destroyed) and the Seven Oakes massacre (the red river settlement decimated) all have the nearby creek in common. Explain.

How did Silver Heights get its name? How about Sturgeon Heights?

Winnipeg was the 3rd biggest city in Canada and growing fast. A couple of events happened in 1919 and Winnipeg would never again be seen as so prosperous and powerful. What were the events?

A few hundred years ago England adopted couverture laws. What effect does this still have on married names in most of the English speaking world?

How did diamonds engagement rings become popular? Why are they worn on the finger next to the little finger?

An 800 year old piece of paper, the Magna Carta, visited Winnipeg a little while ago. Why do many consider this to be the most important piece of paper in Western history?