miércoles, 19 de enero de 2011

Robert Peary






Robert Edwin Peary (May 6, 1856 - Feb. 20, 1920) was an American explorer and Naval officer who led the first expedition to the North Pole. In 1909, Peary, Matthew A. Henson, and four Eskimos were the first people to reach the North Pole.
In 1908, after having already attempted two trips to the North Pole, Peary and his party sailed to Ellesmere Island (at the far north of Canada) on the USS Roosevelt. In early March, 1909, the expedition (Matthew A. Henson, Dr. John W. Goodsell, Donald B. MacMillion, Ross G. Marvin, George Borup and Captain Robert Bartlett) left their base camp at Cape Columbia and headed north in dog sleds (which Henson built). Peary, Henson and four Eskimos reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909 (the others turned back at various places along the way). It is now thought that Peary and Henson may have been 30-60 miles (50-100 km) short of reaching the pole (because of navigational mistakes that were made). Frederick A. Cook (who had accompanied Peary on an earlier expedition) later claimed to have reached the North Pole before Peary, in April 1908; this claim was later rejected completely as a cruel hoax.

Peary led many earlier expeditions, including explorations of Nicaragua (looking for a good location for a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans). These exploratory trips included:

1888 (Nicaragua)
1891-92 (Nicaragua)
1893-95 (with Hugh J. Lee and Henson: charted the ice cap of Greenland - the expedition members almost starved to death)
1896 (meteorite collection in the Arctic)
1897 (meteorite collection in the Arctic)
1898-1902 (many Arctic expeditions)
1905-06 (North Pole - they only made it to 87°06' N)
1908-09 (North Pole - successful)
Peary was awarded a Congressional medal in 1944 for his polar expedition

Matthew Henson





Matthew Henson

On April 6, 1909, two American explorers became the first people to set foot on the North Pole. At the time, only Robert Peary was given credit for this achievement. But he never would have made it without his fellow explorer, an African American named Matthew Henson.

Born in 1866, Henson began working on a sailing ship when he was 12. For six years, he traveled the world, learning to read, write and navigate the seas.

In 1890, Peary asked Henson to join his expeditions. Henson proved to be a skilled seaman, hunter, igloo builder and sled driver. He was able to develop a close relationship with the Inuit people because he spoke their language. The Inuit became important allies on polar expeditions.

During their 18 years together, Henson and Peary went on eight missions through the dangerous Arctic ocean. When they finally reached the North Pole, it was Henson who had the honor of planting the American flag on the ground.

The Inuit

Several thousand years after the first people crossed the Bering Land Bridge into North America, other people came to North America by boats, crossing from Siberia across the Arctic Ocean to Alaska. This was about 7000-5000 BC. Archaeologists call these people the pre-Dorset Culture. They seem to have begun to leave Alaska about 4500 BC, when a warming period melted some of the Arctic ice, and they reached Greenland about 2500 BC. They hunted musk ox and reindeer in the north, and further south they hunted seal and caribou.
A second wave of people migrated into the Arctic from the west about 1000 BC. Archaeologists call these people the Dorset Culture, and the Inuit called them the Tuniit. These people were tall and strong, and they seem to have reached Greenland, on the Atlantic coast, about 500 BC. About 200 AD, the Tuniit seem to have abandoned Greenland again, and then around 1000 AD they began to migrate back south into Greenland, at first living mainly in the north and gradually moving south. The Arctic was getting warmer around 1000 AD, and maybe this made it harder for the Tuniit to find and hunt the animals they depended on for food.


The warmer weather melted the ice and made it easier for outsiders to invade Tuniit land. So about 1000 AD, the Tuniit people began to be conquered by a third wave of people who were moving east from Alaska along the Arctic Circle. These people called themselves the Inuit (some people call them the Eskimo, but that's an insulting Algonquin word for them). The Inuit seem to have reached the Atlantic coast by around 1400 AD. These Inuit people were shorter than the Tuniit, but they had big military advantages because they had dogs and boats, and apparently the Tuniit didn't. The Inuit hunted whales and used the meat to eat and the bones to build their houses.

About the same time, drawn by the warmer weather, Viking people also settled in Greenland. The first Vikings arrived in 986 AD, just as the Tuniit began to move southward into Greenland, and just as the Inuit began to move east

Martin Luther King Jr.






Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family's long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. Martin Luther attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955. In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Martin Luther King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Always a strong worker for civil rights for members of his race, King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation. He was ready, then, early in December, 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States, the bus boycott described by Gunnar Jahn in his presentation speech in honor of the laureate. The boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the Supreme Court of the United States had declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals. During these days of boycott, King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled over six million miles and spoke over twenty-five hundred times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action; and meanwhile he wrote five books as well as numerous articles. In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience. and inspiring his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, "l Have a Dream", he conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of twenty times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Martin Luther King Jr. Activity





1. What was Martin Luther King Jr.'s original name?

2. What was the name of his wife?

3. How old was MLK Jr. when he won the Nobel Peace Prize?

4. How many people went to hear his "I have a Dream" speech in Washington D.C.?

5. What happened to MLK Jr.?

sábado, 15 de enero de 2011

Mahalia Jackson, 5th grade






Mahalia Jackson

October 26, 1911

New Orleans, Louisiana

FAMILY BACKGROUND: Mahalia was the third child to John A. Jackson, a barber and preacher, and Charity Clark, who died at the age of 25 when Mahalia was four years old. In 1916, her father sent her to live with her aunt Mahalia "Duke" Paul. Aunt Duke didn't allow secular music in her house, but Mahalia's cousin would sneak in records. Even at a very young age, Mahalia had a booming voice and she would sing hymns and old-time gospel tunes around the house.

EDUCATION: Mahalia attended the McDonough School No. 24 in New Orleans through the eighth grade.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Mahalia Jackson is viewed by many as the pinnacle of gospel music. Her singing began at the age of four in her church, the Plymouth Rock Baptist Church in New Orleans. Her early style blended the freedom and power of gospel with the stricter style of the Baptist Church. As a teenager, through her cousin's aid, she was influenced by such famous singers as Bessie Smith, Ida Cox, Enrico Caruso and Ma Rainey, and her own style began to emerge into a more soulful expression.

In 1927, at the age of 16, she moved to Chicago and found work as a domestic. But soon after, she found plenty of work as a soloist at churches and funerals after joining the Greater Salem Baptist Church choir. Her unique contralto voice caught the attention of many small churches from coast to coast. Larger, more formal churches frowned upon her energetic renditions of songs. After performing with the Prince Johnson Singers, she began recording for Decca Records in 1937. When the records did not sell as well as expected, she became a beautician. However, after five years of touring with composer Thomas A. Dorsey at gospel tents and churches, Mahalia's popularity and success garnered her another record contract, this time with Apollo Records, from 1946 to 1954. She then switched to Columbia Records, from 1954 to 1967, where she attained broad recognition as a spiritual singer.

Throughout the 1950s, Mahalia's voice was heard on radio, television and concert halls around the world. Her shows were packed in Europe, and her audience very enthusiastic at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, at a special all-gospel program she requested. In 1954, she began hosting her own Sunday night radio show for CBS. She performed on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956 where she catapulted gospel music into America's mainstream. She sang for President Dwight Eisenhower and at John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball in 1960.

From the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott until her death, Mahalia was very prominent in the Civil Rights Movement. Very close with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she often performed at his rallies--even singing an old slave spiritual before his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington in 1963. She also sang at his funeral five years later.

Despite her doctors ordering her to slow down, Mahalia refused and collapsed while on tour in Munich in 1971. She died of heart failure on January 27, 1972, at her home in Evergreen Park, Illinois.

Elizabeth Blackwell, 6th grade




Early life and childhood
Elizabeth Blackwell was born on February 3, 1821, in Bristol, England to Samuel and Hannah Blackwell. Because Samuel Blackwell was a dissenter (one who refuses to accept the authority of an established church), the Blackwell children were denied public schooling. Samuel hired private tutors who went against English tradition and instructed the girls in the same subjects as the boys. Hannah Blackwell inspired her children by introducing them to music and literature.

When Elizabeth was twelve years old, Samuel Blackwell brought his family to New York, New York. Samuel Blackwell soon became a strong supporter of abolition, the movement to end slavery in America. He also established a sugar refinery in New York City and was doing quite well until the economy faltered in 1837 and he lost most of his wealth.

In 1838 the Blackwells moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, hoping for a new start. But within a few months Samuel Blackwell died, leaving his family unprovided for. The three oldest girls supported the family for several years by operating a boarding school for young women.

Seeking an education
In 1842 Elizabeth Blackwell accepted a teaching position in Henderson, Kentucky, but local racial attitudes offended her strong abolitionist beliefs and she resigned at the end of the year. On her return to Cincinnati, a friend who had undergone treatment for a gynecological disorder (having to do with women's reproductive organs) told Blackwell that if a woman doctor had treated her, she would have been spared an embarrassing ordeal. She also urged Elizabeth to study medicine. At first Blackwell disregarded the idea of becoming a doctor. But eventually her ideas changed, and the thought of becoming a doctor turned into an obsession. Friends discouraged her, though, and even recommended that, if she chose to study medicine, her best choice was to move to France, disguise herself as a man, and only then would she be accepted into medical school.

In 1845 Blackwell moved to Asheville, North Carolina, where she taught school and, with the help of physician John Dickson, studied medicine in her spare time. Her next move, in 1846, was to a girls' school in Charleston, South Carolina, where she had more time to devote to her medical studies, this time under the guidance of Dickson's brother, Samuel.

When Blackwell's attempts to enroll in the medical schools of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York City were rejected (by twenty-nine different schools), she wrote to a number of small northern colleges. In 1847 she was admitted to the Geneva, New York, Medical College. Blackwell later learned that her application to the Geneva school was initially rejected and she was only admitted as some sort of practical joke, for no woman had ever attempted to gain admittance into a medical school.

All eyes were upon the young woman whom many regarded as immoral (sinful) or simply mad. At first Blackwell was even barred from attending classroom demonstrations. Soon, however, Blackwell's quiet personality and hard work won over her classmates and teaching staff. Her graduation in 1849 was highly publicized on both sides of the Atlantic. She then entered La Maternité Hospital for further study and practical experience. While working with the children, she contracted purulent conjunctivitis, an eye infection which left her blind in one eye.

Setting up practice
Handicapped by partial blindness, Dr. Blackwell gave up her ambition to become a surgeon and began practice at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. In 1851 she returned to New York City, where she applied for several positions as a physician, but was rejected because she was a woman.

Blackwell then established a private practice in a rented room, where her sister Emily, who had also pursued a medical career, soon joined her. Their modest dispensary (medical office) later became the New York Infirmary and College for Women, operated by and for women. Dr. Blackwell also continued to fight for the admission of women to medical schools. In the 1860s she organized a unit of female field doctors during the Civil War (1861–65), where Northern forces fought against those of the South over, among other things, slavery and secession (the withdrawal of the Southern States from the Federal Union).

In 1869 Dr. Blackwell set up practice in London and continued her efforts to open the medical profession to women. Her articles and her autobiography (1895) attracted widespread attention. From 1875 to 1907 she was professor of gynecology at the London School of Medicine for Women. She died at her home in Hastings in 1910, leaving behind a legacy that would pave the way for countless generations of female physicians.



Read more: Elizabeth Blackwell Biography - life, family, childhood, children, school, young, old, information, born, college, house, time, year, sister http://www.notablebiographies.com/Be-Br/Blackwell-Elizabeth.html#ixzz1B5diOL80

Prime or Composite??

A prime number is a natural number that can be divided, without leaving
any remainder, by only itself and one. A prime number has only two factors,
itself and one.
For example, 5 can be divided, without a remainder, only by 5 and 1.
5 has exactly two natural number factors, 5 and 1.
5 is a prime number.

A composite number is an natural number that can be divided, without
leaving any remainder, by a natural number other than itself and one.
For example,
2 = 1 × 2 Prime
3 = 1 × 3 Prime
6 = 1 × 6 and 2 × 3 Composite
6 can be divided by 2 and by 3, so 6 is composite.
15 = 1 × 15 and 3 × 5 Composite
15 can be divided by 3 and by 5, so 15 is composite.

Prime Factorization

Prime Numbers

A Prime Number can be divided evenly only by 1 or itself.
And it must be a whole number greater than 1. The first few prime numbers are: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 17 ...,

Factors
"Factors" are the numbers you multiply together to get another number:

Prime Factorization
"Prime Factorization" is finding which prime numbers multiply together to make the original number.

Another way to approach the task is to choose ANY pair of factors and split these factors until all the factors are prime:


To shorten prime factorization, numbers are often expressed in powers, so

Homework January 14th, 5th grade.

The Sea of Sand: In ancient times, Egypt and Kush did very little trade with West Africa. They had heard that West Africa had wonderful things – gold, salt, ivory. They knew that West Africa needed iron. They wanted to trade with West Africa, but the Sahara Desert was in the way.

The Sahara Desert is huge! Can you imagine a desert that stretches all the way from New York to California? Or one that runs all the way from Maine to Mexico? The Sahara Desert is the largest desert in the world!

The Sahara Desert is hot! It's one of the hottest places on earth. During the day, the temperature can be 130 degrees.

The Sahara Desert is dry! As miserable as you would be from the heat, it’s the dryness that makes it a desert. There is so little water. It hardly ever rains. The Sahara perhaps enjoys three inches of rain a year, and even that is speckled. It might rain in one place and not rain again in the same place for years. It’s no wonder that the Sahara Desert is called the Sea of Sand.

Oasis: An oasis is a wet rest stop. It’s a small section of desert that is fed by underground streams of water. In these tiny sections of the desert, there are green plants and cool water. Even though there are many oases in the Sahara, the Sahara is so big that you might have to travel a day or even weeks to reach one. In the meantime, you are exposed to hot, very hot shifting sand dunes that seem to run forever.

Desert Life: There are many animals and plants in the desert, including poisonous snakes and poisonous spiders. But the Sahara is not a geographically friendly place for humans.

Questions:

1. How hot is the Sahara Desert sometimes?

2. What is the nickname of the Sahara?

3. What is an oasis?

4. Name some of the animals that live in the Sahara.

5. Why didn't people want to trade with West Africa?

miércoles, 12 de enero de 2011

Guía de estudio semestral Geografía y su enseñanza II

Guía de estudio semestral
Geografía y su enseñanza II
“El pensamiento geográfico y la didáctica de la geografía” en EGB de Pilar Benejam.
“La casa en llamas” de Carl Sagan.
¿Cuáles son los 3 elementos que tiene la orientación?
Saber las etapas deben considerarse en una salida didáctica, según Javier Hernández.
Saber la secuencia para realizar las salidas didácticas.
Saber la importancia que tienen las actividades de imaginación espacial en la interpretación y elaboración de mapas.
Del texto “las estrategias de aprendizaje”, que menciona el autor que debe ser el papel del maestro en el diseño y aplicación de cada una de las estrategias de enseñanza presentadas.
En la actividad del “paisaje”, en que grados recomienda el autor que puede ser posible realizar el ejercicio?
Que nos dice el Libro del Maestro, Geografía que son los objetivos de las imágenes?
De la lectura de Joel Swerdlow, ¿A que se refiere como la nueva ¨”era de la exploración” del hombre?
¿Qué finalidades tiene la materia de Geografía y enseñanza mencionada a principio de curso?
“Los libros de texto gratuitos”, nos sugiere hacer ¿que actividad al otorgar los libros de geografía a nuestros alumnos?
Saber que cuestiones resuelven la didáctica de la geografía.

lunes, 10 de enero de 2011

Homework 6th grade January 10-14

Vocabulary: definition and 5 times each
diploma, absurd, obedient, behalf, reject, delirious, dean, candidate, hovers

Spelling: 5 times each
heel,
heal,
symbol,
cymbal,
herd

Homework 5th grade January 10-14

Vocabulary: Definition and 5 times each
address
college
mirror
recess
committee

Spelling: 5 times each
slavery
teenager
barber
choir
appreciate
released

Welcome back St Andrew students!

Welcome back,

Hope everyone had a great vacation. I expect great things in our class in 2011.

See you in class!

Mr. Tovar