Orientation, Syllabus, and Getting to Know Each Other
What today is about
Your first class. No content yet, no marks, nothing to submit.
Today is for three things: the conversation that starts this course and produces our class creed and our norms, walking through how the year actually runs, and joining Google Classroom. The science starts next class with Block 1.
Everything we mention today lives permanently on this site, so you do not need to take notes to keep up. If you miss today, read How This Class Works and you will have the substance of it.
Before you start the work
Use all of these. We walk through them together today, and they stay here all year for you to come back to.
No notes needed for this one. Watch it the way you would watch anything: we will talk about what it made you feel, not what it made you learn.
Today's work: the conversation, the syllabus, and Classroom
Whole-class, teacher-led. Nothing here is graded.
This is how the course starts. Back to the video, four questions, as a whole class, in this order:
- How do you feel after watching that?
- What does it imply for us, as humans on Earth?
- What role do we have in looking after the environment, and what responsibility comes with it?
- What do we want to commit to, as a class, for this course and for the place we live?
The first question has no wrong answer and every answer gets heard. Out of the last one we build two things together on chart paper, in our own words. Our creed: what this class commits to, for the course and for the environment. Our norms: how we agree to work with each other so that the creed is actually possible.
The chart goes on the wall and stays there for the year. It is meant to be in front of us, not filed somewhere and forgotten, and it can be added to when we decide it is missing something.
It sits alongside Class Expectations, which is the working agreement your teachers bring. The creed and the norms are the half the class writes. We come back to the creed at the end of Unit 4, when you have the climate science, and again in Unit 6, when you redesign a piece of Chennai.
What you're submitting today
Nothing. Today does not produce a submission.
Two things: make sure you can open Google Classroom for this course, and skim How This Class Works. Block 1 assumes you have seen it once.
One question before you leave
Verbal, not written. Nothing is set up yet: your Class Notebook comes in Block 1, and the Reflection Journal tool opens in Google Classroom from Block 1 on.
Name one thing about this course that sounds different from other science classes you have taken, and one thing you want to know more about. Say it out loud to the person next to you.