Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!

Wait... wrong Empire

Here an empire; there an empire... everywhere an empire!

Have you recovered from the "WHAP Reading to End all WHAP Readings?" Hopefully you actually headed our advice and broke it up into some nice manageable chunks. Or, even better, started it early before we even assigned it. I was keeping my eye out today to see who had the biggest pile of paper that was their notes. Some of y'all killed some trees!

Please remember... it's great if you wrote down key ideas, terms and people, And, then you back and cross-referenced those notes with the vocabulary from the reading guide. But, we really hope you can analyze and compare these individual empires with other civilizations both from this time period and others. This why we gave you that "blueprint" yesterday. A great idea might be to take those 8 characteristics down one side of a chart, and then the Classical Empires down the other side. Then... you know what's next... fill it in! In fact, as you may have noticed, we kinda started that today. WHOA. IT'S ALMOST LIKE WE KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING. 

The Roman Empire is so fetch. 

So, you're saying there's more? 

In class today, we had quite a few questions from you that seemed to stem from a desire to know more details about sme of these empires. In my opinion, they are all fascinating. I can see why you'd like to know more. We cannot dedicate too much time to get into all the nitty-gritty details on these empires. We do, however, encourage you to learn a little more about the ones you found most interesting. All of them created amazing inventions, breath-talking works of art, and really battles and stuff! 

This is another reason to learn about these empires... so YOU don't make the same mistakes. 

The Week Ahead

You're so far away... doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? Anyone? Not a lot of Carole King fans out there I take it. Well, guess what isn't far away? THANKSGIVING BREAK!! 

If you listen closely, you can actually hear my waist expanding. 

Before we get there though - you have another reading due tomorrow (Thurs.) and then you are going to come to class on Friday ready to do work son! Don't forget that you've got a Current Event tomorrow as well. Finish Strong!

This has nothing to do with anything, but they look so cute that it had to be posted. 

Soundtrack of the Week

We are still rollin' strong with our live performances themed week. We started out with one of the most anthemic bands you can ever see, Arcade Fire.
Let's switch gears a bit and slow things down. I sincerely hope that you've heard of Norah Jones. Not only is she an immensely talented super awesome musician and a multiple Grammy award winning artist; she is a Dallas native! Yep. She grew up here and went to Booker T. Washington School for the Performing Arts. It might not seem like it from her music, but she puts on a fantastic show. It is personal and intimate but still fun and light. She is a natural performer with a natural command of an audience. You should definitely get out and see her sometime. Here is Norah Jones with "Chasing Pirates."