Professional Development: Mesopotamia

   I absolutely love to learn new things, that is one of the main reasons I became a teacher.  I miss being in college and opening up brand new textbooks (yes, that is the nerd in me). One of my teacher evaluation standards that I chose to work on this year was knowing the content that I teach.   I feel like I can easily come up with fun ideas for teaching but I don't remember ever learning some of the things in our curriculum.  Therefore, one of my goals is to do some intense studying before I start teaching something.  I've decided to reflect on what I have learned by posting some interesting facts on my blog.
   This week I will start teaching Mesopotamia so I have been doing a lot of reading a research about ancient Egypt.  Resources I've used to learn more about this ancient egypt civilization include Discover Kids Magazine, Mr. Donn's Ancient Mesopotamia lesson plan guide, the Bible, Discovery Streaming and Worldmap.com.

Where is Mesopotamia?

Mesopotamia was where we consider to be modern day Iraq.

It is also known as the "Fertile Crescent" because of the two rivers that run through it.  The Tigris and Euphrates rivers provided rich nutrients to the soil which allowed for better farming conditions. 

2 weeks later...

Yes, I am just now posting this post after writing the start of it two weeks ago.  I'm now finished with my Mesopotamia unit and it went very well.  The past few weeks have been quite stressful with my grandma passing away and a lot going on at work.  As this unit comes to an end I am looking forward to a fresh start with Egypt next week!