Jez's Blog

29/OCT/2007

Today is the due day of the class skit, I as nervous because I haven't really memorized my lines, and I'm good at acting because I've only had een in drama class for 1 sermaster when I was in 7th grade. But however, I couldn't avoid it, so I really desperaped. I think the thing that our skit had taught us about teamwork is that teamwork isn't always easy, you need to communitcate with your team, deal with different ideas from your team-mates and organize the ideas into one complete thought, and having a leader in a group is always a good thing, because he, she or they can help to organize the thoughts form everyone in the team and thay can also help to increace the communications in the team. And although we've used some of the information from the book to make our skit, by acting the skit, it feels like we were experiencing the live of a person from the Tang Dynasty, which let me have a stronger memorie about it. Our skit was going very well today but there's still some space for it's imprvoment. So if I want to improve our skit, I think we should rehearse for few times, prepare more, mabe make some things to help acting the skit. And most importantly, memorize the script!

Today in class, we didn't have any presentation, so finally, we could relax a bit in class. But still, we had a assignment for the next class. However, instead of doing another Keynote (Powerpoint) due next class, Mr. Burghauser gave us another kind of assignment, which was to writing a story of a person that loved long time ago in the Tang Dynasty. While we were all doing the assignment in class, which Mr. Burghauser told us to, he told us that this assignment isn't easy, even before we told him it was hard, so I think he just want us to try our best. However, I've done something like this before in my school last year, so I sort of knew how do I do this thing, and this time, we were working in groups, which had made this assignment easier then the one I did before, because I was working individually last time, and the think I wrot about was a diary of a Spartan girl. Anyway, today I put 100% of my guts into the working of the new assignment. And, when Grace and U were working on it, Mr. Burgauser came to see our work, and he said it was excellent. Which made me felt more confident. So will try my best on theis assignment, and just hope that it will turns out well.

11/Oct/2007

Today was another presentation day, everyone were nervous, well...I don't know the boys, but I know the girls did. I was nervous because I thought that this project that Grace and I had done wasn't very good, I saw Connie and Eunice's befre the class started, the did like 11 pages but we only did 7, and our topic, The Han Dyasty was sort of included all the other topics. And the project was on Grace's laptop, so I thought she might had add some informations or pictures on it to make it better, but unfortunately, she didn't. So even whe other groups started to present, I had to add somethings in it. However, Mr. Burghauser said that everyone's work were wonderful, so I guess we were just...wonderful, so I don't have to worry about it anymore. After the presentatoon, Mr. Burghauser told us a little about the Society Mobility 'Old Money' and the 'New Money', which was related by the question, 'How's the different between the Han's Society and nowdays?' But in one of the Chinese sayings said that 'one's wealthy won't last for 3 generations.' So, those people that lives with the 'Old Money' will have to beware about that.

04/Oct/2007

Today is the presentation day, I'm a bit nervous because Grace and I did it seperately most of the time, we only dicussed when we met at school, so I'm afraid that our presentation might be 'holly'. In the beginning of class, Mr. Burghuser sid that he's going to let us, the students to charge everything in class, it meant that we'd have to contral the timing of prepering, presenting and questioning. I was a it shocked when he told us that he would not be in charge of the class, I was thinking that if he just sit at the back of the classroom and do his own stuff, then how can he grade on us? But however, we just started to do it, to charge the class by our own. The first group presenting was the group of Connie and Eunice, they were presenting about the Daoism. They told about the believes and the founders in Daoism. The founders were Lauzi and Zhuagzi, and it believed that natural orders will rule the civilization well. Then, we were the next group, our topic was Legalism v.s. Confucianism, we told about some main points of Legalism and Confucianism, how is Confucius, the philosophies of both and the conflict between both. During presenting, Grace and I took turns to read the pages out loud, but because my throw didn't fell very good this morning, so Grace had read the most of them. After that, it's the time of questioning, and I think there were a lot questions of us, maybe we didn't do it very well so that everyone still got a lot of question, but when we'd finished the presentation, Mr. Burghauser said it was brilliant, so, I don't know...Anyway, there were a lot of questions, and I answered most of them, or you could even say that I've answered ALL of them. The next presenting group was the boys. Their topic was Legalism, whcs they had 'won' it in the last class. They talked about the rules of Legalism, Qin Dynasty because it was ruled in Ledalism, the rulers of Qin Dynasty and the Great Wall. Finally, in the end of this class, Mr. Burghauser became a thecher again, he told us that we were doing a great job, and we will do it agin next time. And for me, I hope I or we, if there is a group, could do it better next time.

1/OCT/2007

The homework foe today was to reread page 104 to page 109, so in class, we talked about basically the same thing last time. Mr. Burghauser wanted us to write 5 most important things in the Chapter, and again, we were devided into groups of 2, and the members in every group stayed the same. Connie and Eunie were in group 1, their 5 most important things were Confucius Great Wall, Other Ethical system, Qin Dynasty and Legalism. Grace and I were in group 2, our 5 most important things were The warring state period, Confucius-The 5 basic relationship-(1)ruler & subject (2)father & son (3)husband & wife (4)older brother younger brother (5)friend & friendFilial Piety is the respect for parents and ancestors, Daoism, Laozi, only natural order was important. And the Qin Dynasty replaced the Zhou Dynasty, Qin Sgi Haungdi. The two boys, Jordan and Kevin were in group 3, and their 5 most important things werer Confucius, Daoism, I Ching and Yin and Yang, Shi Haungdi and Legalist. After sharing all these 5 most important things in each group, Mr. Burghauser found out the common ones and told us to do a Powerpoient presentation about the selected topic of your group. The topics were Legalist v.s. Confucius, Daoism, and Qin Dynasity. At firt, everyone wanted to do Qin Dynasty, why? I don't know, but I know I want to do it because there is more informations about it, therefore It might be easer to do the researching. Then, I was thinking that someone has to grow up here, so I changed my mind and chose another topic, Legalist v.s. Confusius. And I hope it helped Mr. Burghauser a bit, because then he only had to throw the coin once. lol

27/SEB/2007

Today in class, we were talking about 'Reading Strategy'. First, we talked about it's meaning, then we divided into groups of 2, sharing our own reading strategies to owr partner, my partner was Grace, her reading stratgy was read, take notes of topics and write it on paper or type it down. After group discussing, we got to share our reading strategies to the whole class. Jordan's was to read it twice; Kevin's was to take notes of each paragraph; connie's was to pay attention to understand words, and also underline your own words that you think are connected to important ideas; Eunice's was to read tittle/heading, and understand how the ideas in that section connect to tittle/heading, and Mr. Burghauser said mine was a great one, which was to take notes on stickies and stick them in books.
And by the way, in a part of class discuss, Mr.Burghauser told as that he likes peanut butter cup, which I've never heard it before. He said it's an amazing ice cream and hope as could get him one on his birthday, on 20th of June, but I don't think there's any in Taiwan, so... sorry Mr. Burghauser! ;p

21/SEB/2007

Today in class, we were discussing about China's civilization.
Mr.Burghauser asked us why China is the oldest CIVILIZATION, but not CULTURE? I couldn't think of the answer of that question.
Then, we listed the 5 most important thing about China. I listed culture, dynasties, geographies, believes and civilizations. But we didn't talk about all, we'd only finished talking about culture, dynasties and geographies. While we were talking about geographies, Mr. Burghauser discribed China's king as him teaching us in an American football field sized classroom. That was a good discription because I really can feel how incredibilly big China is... and that also explained why people has to beware of buying things that are made in China. And people who has their factories in China really have to rule their workers.

18/SEB/2007

Today, we've been presenting the subject we had researched about
Taiwan. Connie and Eunice was the first group to present. They
presented their selected subject which was Superstitions in Taiwan,
with powerpoint and I helped a bit. Their presentation was awesome!
even though most of them I've known already. And Mr. Burghause
thought that it was so awesome that it had woke him from the
sleepiness in the early morning. Then, the second group was us, Grace
and I. We didn't use powerpoint, but I think our informations were
abundant. I think this project was easy because I've been in Taiwan's
local elementary school, so I know quite a lot about the our subject,
which was the Educational System in Taiwan. After us, it was Jordan
and Kevin's turn. They were talking about the Religion in Taiwan.
Well...I don't really know about the religions, so it was quiet
interesting for me.