Performance Education . . . Daily Stuff

NEW YORK (Associated Press) - The fear, the hassle, the long lines in the hot sun, and now the wait.

Many IndyMac customers who are moving their money to another bank won’t be able to access all of their funds for more than week.

By law, the other banks must make IndyMac cashier’s check deposits up to $5,000 available for withdrawal in one business day. But any amount over that can be held up to nine business days.

That’s rough for Los Angeles resident Ash Carene, who doesn’t have time to wait for an IndyMac check to clear at another bank. He needs more than $100,000 for a down payment by Friday to complete the purchase of a three-bedroom house in San Diego. If he misses the deadline, he could violate the terms of the sales contract and lose his $10,000 deposit.

“I’m still waiting in line to get inside,” the 40-year-old computer programmer said Thursday afternoon. “I was here in the morning and left to take care of business. I waited a little bit, hoping the line would get better and came back later.”

Read the full story.

How do your students relate to the Great Depression?  What lessons did we learn from the Great Depression that might save us from a depression this time around (FDIC?).  Teaching the Great Depression? Click this link.

You may remember a few months back we had the Tourney of Champions.  Well it seems it caught on . . .

The British chose Winston Churchill; the Americans chose Ronald Reagan; and the South Africans chose Nelson Mandela.

Now Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Tsar Nicholas II, the country’s last monarch, are running neck and neck in a contest sponsored by state-run Rossia television called “Name of Russia,” a Russian version of the BBC show “Great Britons” aimed at selecting the country’s most significant historical figure.

As of 9 p.m. Monday, more than 2.3 million votes had been cast in the Internet poll, which had Stalin in first place with 252,360 votes, narrowly leading Nicholas II, who had 252,262 votes, according to the contest’s web site, www.nameofrussia.ru.

Read full story.

File this story to teach how historical perspectives differ from place to place.  Ask students the following questions:

1. Do you know who Stalin was?
2. Do you know who Nicholas II was?
3. Who do you think would win this poll if taken in America (take a quick vote in your class).
4. What can you infer about the Russian people from this?  (some still long for communism?)

A friend of mine was asking how to correctly pronounce “Pecan Pie”. Of course it’s pee-can. Right? Or is it puh-kahn? Or even p’cahn? Well, as it often goes, this conversation led me down a long road of internet searching seeking answers.

I came across a website breaking down the different dialects of the USA and found it very interesting. Do you think your students could identify the names and characteristics of the regions?

Who settled the Pacific Southwest? Who already lived there? How did this affect the dialect spoken? What new words were created?

See full size map

Read more on US dialects

Hitler and Himmler, Goebbels, and Goering.
What a disgusting crowd, each worse than the other.

One was the fascist dictator of Germany.
One was the Minister of Propaganda.
One built the Nazi war machine.
One was the architect of the Holocaust.

You tell each man’s story.
Then students predict what happens to him.

Take a look at this free lesson at Performance Education.

Yes, friends, it’s our brand-new book.
Profiles of 100 people who shaped World History.
(And who appear on end-of-course tests.)

We tell you about the historical figure.
Then you predict what happens to him or her.

We present the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Everybody from Archduke Ferdinand to Osama bin Laden.

Great for class openers!
Great for summarizing the 20^th century!
Great fun for students of any age!

See the free lessons.

Did you know that much of the food you eat travels half way across the world before it ends up at your local grocery store? Each year, the average American eats about 260 pounds of imported foods.

You begin by listing all of the foods you ate yesterday – and then discover where that food comes from. Did you know that 35% of your veggies, 43% of your fruit, and 84% of your seafood comes from overseas?

Using a time line, examine the recent food scandals involving salmonella, Hepatitis A, and worse.
Using a world map, examine the food rejected by the FDA. (China’s food is the most rejected.)
Read about why the U.S. Olympic team is taking its own food to Beijing.
Does your chicken come from China? (You betcha, so be on the lookout for the deadly bird flu.)

Learn how to read food labels. As of September 20, 2008 all imported food must list its country of origin. This makes a great treasure hunt for students.

Great for teaching Geography, World Trade, or the upcoming Olympics in Beijing.
Or simply buying food at the grocery store for your own family.

This is an updated lesson for our workbook World Trade.
Take a peek at these shocking lessons!

Ok - the post is a day late - but that’s what I get for taking Monday off!

Missing in the classroom . .  . I fear that because this day falls in the summer, it doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the classroom. But Juneteenth deserves some recognition.

File this post for an early school year daily warm up (we’ll try to remind you and help you with a free lesson plan come late August.)

It seems like just yesterday I was pondering the 6 billion (people on earth) mark. While in actuality, it was in 1999 - that’s a very short time to add 1 billion people to the planet. According to this AP article, that’s exactly what will have happened by the year 2012.

SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS - you need to be discussing population with your students. Population (along with religion) is probably the single largest factor in what shapes both historical and current events. Students need to understand what it means as we continually add to the population.

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The perfect tool for teaching world population and population and resource distribution!

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Stay tuned in the coming weeks for FREE population lesson plans.

I came across a Social Studies blog today that asked this question. I thought I knew for sure the answer, but then realized I wasn’t sure at all.

History of Nations - Oceania defines Oceania as, “Oceania includes most of the Pacific Ocean as well as portions of the Indian Ocean. Excluded are island nations which have been traditionally considered a part of Asia. Oceania includes Australia, New Zealand, and all of Polynesia.” That definition is a bit vague.

Wikipedia takes a stab at it also. “Oceania is a geographical, often geopolitical, region consisting of numerous lands—mostly islands in the Pacific Ocean and vicinity. The term is often used in many languages to define one of the continents and is one of eight terrestrial ecozones. Ethnologically, the islands that are included in Oceania are divided into the subregions of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The exact scope of Oceania is variably defined: it generally includes New Zealand, is often taken to include parts of Australasia such as Australia and New Guinea, and sometimes all or part of the Malay Archipelago.”

So is Australia in Oceania? How about Hawaii?

Could your students draw an outline of Oceania on a world map?

While I’m sure it would be a stretch to call it an “officially sanctioned action” by the Chinese government, but it seems they really don’t like our congressmen talking about their human rights violations.

Wolf, a champion of human rights in China and elsewhere, said at a news conference that authorities investigated the attacks on four of his computers in August 2006 and traced them to a computer in China.

The hackers, he said, gained access to sensitive information about the identities and locations of many Chinese dissidents and refugees he has worked with during his years in Congress. He said he suspects that he was targeted because of his human rights work.

Read the full story at the Washington Post.

Now is a perfect time to take a look at China on The Eve of the Olympics.