Let’s kick off with FEAR! Knowing from what I read, the writers of the listed novels had an interest of using fear in their writing. Before I explain what I understood through reading, have you ever wondered what makes us decide against our will; and if you did, you’ll probably be rewarded with a black eye and a chipped tooth. Think of it, if you were ganged-up on and was forced to take their orders, would you dare disobey them? If you were in that situation, you’ll probably feel hot inside and weak outside. That heat is fear. Being driven into doing unwanted things are always because the fear of the consequences is controlling your mind. For example, Jack from “the Lord of the Rings” used fear of the monster to control the children. Adding on, “The Wave” and “Anne Frank” had World War II involved. People fear losing things, people fear pain, and people fear death, people was separated, killed and lost. That’s why people had no choice but to support Hitler. Even though this fear may be an element not worth having, by looking on the bright side, fear had helped us too. This devil is what controls them to prevent taking stupid action, like jumping of a forty-floor building. Thus, making them sweet little angels. Come to conclusion, I don’t know if fear is good or bad, but I know it helps people make decisions. There is no way to get rid of fear, because it comes from inside of you. It’s attached to your heart, and at every beat, it changes your life forever.

Next in line is Poetry. Yes it may seem boring and hard. Looking at its formation can already cause you a headache. But, if you had a chance to explore and write poetry, things can turn out different and entirely changes your view towards poetry. Why do people read or write poetry? Well, it’s all up to them, their curiosity is able to force them to read and write without any food or sleep at all. From what I learned, poetry is an excellent way to present moral and lessons to people. Poets puts hopes and efforts into poetry because they think it’s a right way to let people learn, besides sitting in a corner for hours try to read a huge thick book of philosophy. By writing poetry, we express our views and thought into something interesting and hopefully, would be appealing to the reader. If the reader understands the point, he/she may probably try to make a difference. Oh sure, poetry may sound like for smart people or old people, but you’re wrong. Anyone can write poetry and no one can judge him or her by how wonderful or terrible it is. It’s a way of putting your thoughts, desire, and soul into your writing. It could be better than rather writing a thousand word journals of long dull sentences. On the other hand, reading poetry is entirely different. In my opinion, reading poetry can improve your self-esteem because readers are often reflected by what they write. Who knows, it may be your next hobby. So go out and try reading and writing poetry, express all you can throughout your pen and paper.

After being through all these, I have well suited the ESLR of an Academic Achiever. It hasn’t always been a pleasant journey but I survived. The coaching of Mr. Raisdana was always been the guidance light to me. He taught well and opened my eyes to a much wider space. By learning along with him, I realized that English was more than writing essays, or speaking fluent English. It was a way to have fun and increase our knowledge by sharing. Now I finally understood that nothing is done in one try, I had to and will still do in the future, revise and keep on improving my work until it satisfies me. It has also not been a solo job whole year either. Working with friends and peer was a big challenge to get through; things may work out fine. But for good or worst, we get to know each other better. “Go on the net to look up on this that and those.” The Internet age has arrived and I was able to cope with this. It was hard at the beginning but after a little supervision, I started blogging and using the wiki. This was an excellent way to exchange ideas and information.

This was truly an awesome year and I held many memories and experience. I thank all my teachers who had the patience to deal with me and directed me from the start. They are the ones I look up to, pay my respect to and listen to. Despite the few days of 8th grade left, I won’t hesitate but to enjoy it to the fullest.  To all the teachers who are leaving, I wish the best to you all and hope we’ll keep in touch. Overall, this was my first year and a spectacular one too!

(Left to right: joo keng, me and novia)

We started learning about viewing things through a different lens. To experiment with this, I chose a popular online game from Singapore to conclude the results. The game “AuditionSea” is a multiplayer dance-battle game originated from Korea and now widely played by Singaporeans (http://www.auditionsea.com/). Anyone from all around the world enjoys this game no matter what gender, class, race and environmentalism it is. That is why I’m going to use what I experienced throughout the game to explain the differences through a different lens.

Boys, like me enjoy this game due to competition against each other. By this, we have fun and obtain some feeling of accomplishment (though it’s not really much to accomplish). Usually Singaporeans who play are Chinese, and Chinese are so-called having pride, so that’s why we hate losing and we flame about small incidents. Since there is not much to relate to environmentalism, I’ll talk about class instead. The game requires you to earn up in-game currency to buy items inside the game. Some who are lazy to do that can rather buy credit using real currency to acquire in-game items. Adding on to that, those credits are high on prices. As I don’t exist from a loaded family (which I have no complaints about whatsoever) have no possibility to afford such credits, furthermore, I strongly consider that is worthless. Environmentalism affects the game on how smoothly the game runs. Malaysia isn’t really caring about the environment; they care about sophisticated technology and hope it would reach their goal in 2020. Therefore, high quality computers were created and people used it here to play the game.

On the other hand, gender wise, girls are more likely to play to socialize, getting to know new friends and maybe, flirting.� As I said before, people scattered all around the globe likes to have fun in this game, therefore, confusion may arise when we speak in communicate differently. For example, I have encountered a few Spanish speakers and Vietnamese speakers; slowly, we apart from each other. Most players in “AuditionSea” suspects Vietnamese players are hackers (a group of people that violates the law of the game to gain what they want in-game). Time zones are different in each area too, so we have to compromise with each other. As for class, some are riches and some are poor. Some the riches don’t play with the poor because they think they’re not fun to play with since they obviously have different opinions about things. They see if a certain player uses credit to determine their class. These players are sometimes considered jerks and brats as they tend to release they’re rage on others when they’re mad. To preserve the environment, countries develop less sophisticated computers to ensure the existence of a good environment. By doing that, those who use lower grade computers to play the game will encounter lags and game resets. When this happens, it affects all the gamers playing with them.

�

First of all, it has been a wonderful quarter as I wouldn’t have even thought that poetry could be so exciting and so heart-touching. “Poetry Night” was an event that revolves around poetry, so we need poems. So back to square one, we were fed with facts and knowledge about these mysterious lines that forms “poetry” by our English teacher, Mr. R. He did an amazing job teaching us how to write these magical “messages”, but overall, he said we would have to find poetry ourselves as it is everywhere. This has made me been a Self-directed Learner to discover poetry in our everyday life. Soon enough, we were able to write poetry without any doubt in mind, as Mr. R said “there’s no right or wrong in poetry, anything can mean anything.” Then everything came to me, I felt as if I understood everything and I could control it to write poems. Alas, he said that a poem is never completed; even the shortest poems have been edited for years to be published, and is yet still believed that it’s not 100% perfect. Regardless, I know that this is something I enjoy, and I might as well do the best I can at it by reading and more reading. I’ve shown skills of an Academic Achiever by acquiring in depth knowledge and developing understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines. Furthermore, as I said, this poetry unit is heart-touching and emotional. In classes, we spent most of the time writing, reading and understanding to gather up some hints and ideas on forming these metaphoric lines. Whenever we started writing poems, we mostly about a photo given to us; we are usually supposed to be writing sensory poems. As the clock ticks and the time dies, our poems should extend to a reasonable length. Adding on, we were taught how to, write haikus. Haikus are formed of 3 lines, the first and third line must have 5 syllables meanwhile the second line contains 7 syllables. As the time pass and the “Poetry Night” was around the corner, pens, pencils, paper and materials were grasped in our hands; rushing yet carefully and elegantly, we tried to compose together all our poems into a creative self-made book. Now after all this, I wished I could turn back the clock and tried out making a rap instead of a 3Rs poem (Rhyme, Repetition & Rhythm). So I’m pretty sure to myself that I haven’t been much of a successful Critical Thinker. Later on, we shared it in front of the class. Knowing that this is a painful yet embarrassing process, its purpose is to get us ready for the poetry night where we had to read out our poems in front of a huge crowd compared to the wee class. While presenting, as a class, we respected the presenter and his/her poem; by doing this, we, as a whole class has demonstrated the ability of an Involved Citizen by show empathy, compassion and respect towards the needs and feelings to him/her.

Meanwhile, our school started to communicate with other schools from around the globe. As global issues rise, we agreed that we started discussing about each issue that dragged our attention. As a team of five to six, we distributed ideas and information. All these information was all kept in a wiki (a website that stores information and can be changed and accessed by authorized people only). They were trying to compose a project about those issues, while we focused on poetry. The information and data were “spices” for us to create a “lesson poem”. It was fun and challenging working with people all around the world, especially since they are all 1 year below of us (7^th Grade). We had to deal with slackers; on the other hand, we had some responsible bee workers. It was natural and we had to adapt to it. We exchanged e-mails, communicated through chat rooms as an Effective Communicator (Incorporating/Utilizing technology as a tool for communication). This part of the poetry unit made me realize how important working as a team can be. Without being united, it’s near impossible to have things work out; on the other hand, working together is the key for success.

Imagine yourself stepping into a huge but cozy room, and a dull yellow lights gives the whole place a moody yet interesting view. Peace and silence fills the room, while depending on a spread of yellow-lighted candles to give readers some light. While relaxing, you could just grab a book filled with magnificent poems and feast on some savory and sweet food; and when the clock strikes 8, young yet spirited ‘poets’ share their deep, mysterious poems at the stand. All that above was everything I experienced during the “Poetry Night”, it was simply magical. I’ve learned a few things that night, everyone has their own writing styles and are all based on their emotions; this is yet another sign of being a Critical Thinker. It was crucial that we treated the visitors with proper attitude and charm, giving advices and serving them required patience. My friends and I helped out at the poetry booths, helping the parents in teaching them how to write poems and haikus, therefore being an Effective Communicator. Overall, it was a magical night experience in school. The room was filled with candle lights, music, food, people, commotion and the poetic feeling. The last student left the stand and time was eating its way through, the room was soon abandoned at 10 o’ clock and everything was over. When I pulled the switch and tucked into bed, I became conscious of the people around me, they are all different, and that’s how the poems were different; for good or bad, everyone is unique that deep down inside, it makes all of us special.

This was a truly awesome quarter. I felt as if I changed over the poetry unit, I began viewing things at a different angle. As Mr. R said, there are 2 ways at looking at the same object, and it can be totally different; just like taking a snapshot compared to slowly editing the image to create something new and makes people want to think of it. The 3^rd quarter has left the building, gone without a trace, and it’s time to go over my progress and results. Using our favorable ESLRs to relate and identify our outcome is the major fraction of this journal. During the 3^rd quarter poetry unit, we have planted our brains and focused our minds on poetry, which branches out to our own hand-made poetry book, the 2^nd annual “Poetry Night”, and the Teen Life Project. To aggravate matters, our time was limited because the Teen Life Project was something new and required a lot of patience.

First of all, it has been a wonderful quarter as I wouldn’t have even thought that poetry could be so exciting and so heart-touching. “Poetry Night” was an event that revolves around poetry, so we need poems. So back to square one, we were fed with facts and knowledge about these mysterious lines that forms “poetry” by our English teacher, Mr. R. He did an amazing job teaching us how to write these magical “messages”, but overall, he said we would have to find poetry ourselves as it is everywhere. This has made me been a Self-directed Learner to discover poetry in our everyday life. Soon enough, we were able to write poetry without any doubt in mind, as Mr. R said “there’s no right or wrong in poetry, anything can mean anything.” Then everything came to me, I felt as if I understood everything and I could control it to write poems. Alas, he said that a poem is never completed; even the shortest poems have been edited for years to be published, and is yet still believed that it’s not 100% perfect. Regardless, I know that this is something I enjoy, and I might as well do the best I can at it by reading and more reading. I’ve shown skills of an Academic Achiever by acquiring in depth knowledge and developing understanding across a broad and balanced range of disciplines. Furthermore, as I said, this poetry unit is heart-touching and emotional. In classes, we spent most of the time writing, reading and understanding to gather up some hints and ideas on forming these metaphoric lines. Whenever we started writing poems, we mostly about a photo given to us; we are usually supposed to be writing sensory poems. As the clock ticks and the time dies, our poems should extend to a reasonable length. Adding on, we were taught how to, write haikus. Haikus are formed of 3 lines, the first and third line must have 5 syllables meanwhile the second line contains 7 syllables. As the time pass and the “Poetry Night” was around the corner, pens, pencils, paper and materials were grasped in our hands; rushing yet carefully and elegantly, we tried to compose together all our poems into a creative self-made book. Now after all this, I wished I could turn back the clock and tried out making a rap instead of a 3Rs poem (Rhyme, Repetition & Rhythm). So I’m pretty sure to myself that I haven’t been much of a successful Critical Thinker. Later on, we shared it in front of the class. Knowing that this is a painful yet embarrassing process, its purpose is to get us ready for the poetry night where we had to read out our poems in front of a huge crowd compared to the wee class. While presenting, as a class, we respected the presenter and his/her poem; by doing this, we, as a whole class has demonstrated the ability of an Involved Citizen by show empathy, compassion and respect towards the needs and feelings to him/her.

Meanwhile, our school started to communicate with other schools from around the globe. As global issues rise, we agreed that we started discussing about each issue that dragged our attention. As a team of five to six, we distributed ideas and information. All these information was all kept in a wiki (a website that stores information and can be changed and accessed by authorized people only). They were trying to compose a project about those issues, while we focused on poetry. The information and data were “spices” for us to create a “lesson poem”. It was fun and challenging working with people all around the world, especially since they are all 1 year below of us (7^th Grade). We had to deal with slackers; on the other hand, we had some responsible bee workers. It was natural and we had to adapt to it. We exchanged e-mails, communicated through chat rooms as an Effective Communicator (Incorporating/Utilizing technology as a tool for communication). This part of the poetry unit made me realize how important working as a team can be. Without being united, it’s near impossible to have things work out; on the other hand, working together is the key for success.

Imagine yourself stepping into a huge but cozy room, and a dull yellow lights gives the whole place a moody yet interesting view. Peace and silence fills the room, while depending on a spread of yellow-lighted candles to give readers some light. While relaxing, you could just grab a book filled with magnificent poems and feast on some savory and sweet food; and when the clock strikes 8, young yet spirited ‘poets’ share their deep, mysterious poems at the stand. All that above was everything I experienced during the “Poetry Night”, it was simply magical. I’ve learned a few things that night, everyone has their own writing styles and are all based on their emotions; this is yet another sign of being a Critical Thinker. It was crucial that we treated the visitors with proper attitude and charm, giving advices and serving them required patience. My friends and I helped out at the poetry booths, helping the parents in teaching them how to write poems and haikus, therefore being an Effective Communicator. Overall, it was a magical night experience in school. The room was filled with candle lights, music, food, people, commotion and the poetic feeling. The last student left the stand and time was eating its way through, the room was soon abandoned at 10 o’ clock and everything was over. When I pulled the switch and tucked into bed, I became conscious of the people around me, they are all different, and that’s how the poems were different; for good or bad, everyone is unique that deep down inside, it makes all of us special.

This was a truly awesome quarter. I felt as if I changed over the poetry unit, I began viewing things at a different angle. As Mr. R said, there are 2 ways at looking at the same object, and it can be totally different; just like taking a snapshot compared to slowly editing the image to create something new and makes people want to think of it.

Line 486- The fringed curtains of thine eye advance

Line 544- I must uneasy make, lest to light winning

Line 545- Make the prize light.

The following lines were phrases I tried and managed to understood-

Line 308- Thou liest, malignant thing. Hast thou forgot

Line 317- For mischief manifold, and sorceries terrible

Line 333- And left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groans

Since 2003 till now, the countries of South Korea, North Korea, Japan, United States of America, China and Russia gather up to discuss about the North Korean Nuclear Weapons Program. They have been searching for a solution for a peaceful resolution. At last,

North Korea decided to shut down their nuclear facilities and use fuel aid instead in 8^th Feb to 13^th Feb 200, which was the 3^rd phase of the Six-party Talk.

The content of the Six-party talk includes:

1. Security Guarantee
2. The construction of light water reactors
3. ‘Peaceful use of nuclear energy’
4. Diplomatic Relations
5. Financial Restrictions / Trade Normalization
6. ‘Verifiable’ and ‘Irreversible’ disarmament         

To read whole article, click here

University of
Utah, where he is now a Director of Creative Writing. Six years before that he has been the Editor of Denver Quarterly and a poetry editor for Colorado Review since 1996. He is the author of eight collections of poetry- My Mojave (Alice James, 2003);
Arcady (Wesleyan, 2002); There Are Three (Wesleyan, 1998); Beautiful Shirt (Wesleyan, 1994); Erasures (Wesleyan, 1992); New Dark Ages (Wesleyan, 1990); The
Gaza of Winter (University of Georgia Press, 1988); and From the Abandoned Cities (Harper & Row, 1983).

Donald Revell says:

Sha-

Dow,

As of

A meteor

At mid-

Day: it goes

From there.

 A perfect circle falls

Onto white imperfections.

(Consider the black road,

How it seems white the entire

Length of a sunshine day.)

 Or I could say

Shadows and mirage

Compensate the world, 

Completing its changes

With no change.

 In the morning after a storm,

We used brooms. Out front,

There was broken glass to collect.

In the backyard, the sand

Was covered with transparent wings. 

The insects could not use them in the wind

And so abandoned them. Why

Hadn’t the wings scattered? Why

Did they lie so stilly where they’d dropped?

It can only be the wind passed through them.

 Jealous lover,

Your desire

Passes the same way.

 And jealous earth,

There is a shadow you cannot keep

To yourself alone.

At midday,

My soul wants only to go

The black road which is the white road.

I’m not needed 

Like wings in a storm, 

And God is the storm. 

I liked this poem because it compared two very different things effectively. It uses a simile in the whole poem to compare the morning after the storm and a jealous lover. I didn’t really like the bracketed phrase in the beginning and yet still don’t know why it is there.

University of
Utah, where he is now a Director of Creative Writing. Six years before that he has been the Editor of Denver Quarterly and a poetry editor for Colorado Review since 1996. He is the author of eight collections of poetry- My Mojave (Alice James, 2003);
Arcady (Wesleyan, 2002); There Are Three (Wesleyan, 1998); Beautiful Shirt (Wesleyan, 1994); Erasures (Wesleyan, 1992); New Dark Ages (Wesleyan, 1990); The
Gaza of Winter (University of Georgia Press, 1988); and From the Abandoned Cities (Harper & Row, 1983).

Donald Revell says:

Sha-

Dow,

As of

A meteor

At mid-

Day: it goes

From there.

 A perfect circle falls

Onto white imperfections.

(Consider the black road,

How it seems white the entire

Length of a sunshine day.)

 Or I could say

Shadows and mirage

Compensate the world, 

Completing its changes

With no change.

 In the morning after a storm,

We used brooms. Out front,

There was broken glass to collect.

In the backyard, the sand

Was covered with transparent wings. 

The insects could not use them in the wind

And so abandoned them. Why

Hadn’t the wings scattered? Why

Did they lie so stilly where they’d dropped?

It can only be the wind passed through them.

 Jealous lover,

Your desire

Passes the same way.

 And jealous earth,

There is a shadow you cannot keep

To yourself alone.

At midday,

My soul wants only to go

The black road which is the white road.

I’m not needed 

Like wings in a storm, 

And God is the storm. 

I liked this poem because it compared two very different things effectively. It uses a simile in the whole poem to compare the morning after the storm and a jealous lover. I didn’t really like the bracketed phrase in the beginning and yet still don’t know why it is there.

The flames that burn the diary symbolize hope and happiness. When the blood drips onto Anne’s diary, it’s supposed to be like someone dying and their blood is dripping on her diary. When the glass breaks, the sound, is supposed to show that there is violence, and glass is getting broken. The Nazi flag shows that the Nazis were a big part of this, along with everything they did. Just as the Jew’s Star of David was supposed to symbolize the Jews and their role in it. Anne’s diary symbolizes her love for writing, and basically how all this information was found out. All the pictures of the gas chambers showed how the Nazis showed no mercy for Jews and how they just stuffed them all in rooms, making them think that they were going to get a shower, but instead they were getting gassed. At the concentration camps, they shoved a whole bunch of people in one little room.

As I don’t have much taste in music, so Catrina and Ahbi searched through millions and millions of websites to dig out heaps of good songs. At last, they found some really great songs such as boom! by System of a Down & 100 Years by Five for Fighting. Boom! is a fast beat song and its lyrics are suitable to the condition going on through the second world war. While 100 years is a slow peaceful song about being fifteen and wishing about the future. Music is important but there’s more than that to make one perfect, the symbols. We’ve used the fire, blood, the Nazi flag, the Jew star and the Anne’s diary as our symbols. Fire symbolizes hope, blood shows death and helplessness, The Nazi flag represents Adolf Hitler. The Jew star represents the discrimination of Jews. It starts off when glass shattered and blood flows; this indicates the disability of the Jews and how helpless they are. In the end, death is the only option and that’s exactly what they get. The beat is fast and the song is clear which makes understanding an easier job. The beats give one nervousness and frightening thoughts. I’ve look through lots of websites to access information showing that I’m a Academic Achiever.

100 years is a soft and peaceful song played when it’s showing all that has she thought of in the ‘Secret Annexe’. All about her life was expressed through simple but meaningful quotes. The song Boom! is all about being fifteen and thinking about the future which what’s Anne is going through the whole time. This is the chance for the audience to be in Anne’s shoes. This song has the lyrics describing on how war went on; when millions were spent on bombs leaving many starving (4000 hungry children leave us per hour, from starvation, while billions are spent on bombs, creating death showers.). The strongest part of the song is the last part when they sang-Whyyy…must weee…kill ooour own kiiind…? (Why must we kill our own kind?) This goes to show that we’ve been critical thinkers by understanding and use the songs and related it to Anne Frank. I feel very certain that the lyrics of this song is suitable for what’s going on during WWll. Whenever the audience listen to what was sung, they would understand the whole situation and be experiencing the pain and sense the suffering through life in the concentration camps; what it feels like to be treated as animals or maybe be worse. This way, we demonstrated the skills of being Involved Citizen by being aware of Anne’s situation. All this makes the crowd both excited and feels uneasy. It starts off when glass shattered and blood flows; this indicates the disability of the Jews and how helpless they are. In the end, death is the only option and that’s exactly what they get. When the Nazi flag and the Jew star merges, his shows how they are similar and connected to each other. At he end, the diary burns and all the pain she had suffered is now gone and hope is near. By using technology to project all this is a tool of communication, which also falls under being Effective Communicators.

The video starts off with a picture of Anne, this is the first step into the movie creating an impression for the audience. Abhi, as usual, being his creative self, created the entire movie using various sources provided by Catrina and me. Abhi did an amazing job with the movie. In my opinion, the sound effects were truly fascinating as it was accurate to the scenes. Besides that, the images were clear and the fonts were big enough, everything is really smooth.

By doing this project, we demonstrated the ability to work both independently and collaboratively because we worked as a group to finish the project made of independent parts of our work put together. Abhi made the flash movie, while we helped edit parts of it and Catrina and Eugene wrote this write up.

After discussing with Catrina (Abhi is away), we decided to give ourselves the grade we deserve. For knowledge, we did a good job on describing the symbols and what they mean. We did a good job on identifying the sounds. We discussed the symbols, images and sounds carefully and did an outstanding job on their meanings; which falls under comprehension. On application, we did an outstanding job on describing the symbols and how it will affect the audience. For analysis, we tried to work hard on comparing but it wasn’t really clear, so I think we only did a good job on it. Last but definitely not least, synthesis, which is based on the movie; Abhi did an amazing job on it and it turn out to an interesting project.

As I’m growing and experiencing the real world bit by bit, I have some concerns about technology, educations and natural disasters. I’m quite sad about the fact that
Malaysia’s technology isn’t as advanced as
Japan. It seems to me that MS lacks of more advanced technology in daily life. Take their phones for example, MS’s handphones are not as durable and flexible as
Japan’s handphones.

Have you ever wondered how our lives are going to be like if we lack of education, but not profession education or subjects we learn in schools, but financial education? I’ve been thinking quite a lot on this topic, and even searched through books and websites explaining this subject. I’m so used to being told, ‘study hard, go overseas, get a PHD, shine your future” that I’m sick of it. By some means, has it ever occurred to you that financial education is as important to us as education we get in school? To me, I don’t want to grow up working for money, I don’t want to be a slave to it. So the only way I can avoid it is by controlling it. And that’s where financial skills come in handy.

To those who aren’t living in MS, Johor is the south state of the
Malaysia peninsular. Lately, there have been extremely terrible floods there going up to 15 feet. Estimated 140 million ringgit (39million
US) worth of property was destroyed by the floods. It has been a very sad case and severely affected the economy. That goes to every region all over the world, we should do our best to prevent these disasters from destroying properties and taking lives away.

Well, that’s all I have to say about myself and I hope you enjoyed it too.

Anthropologist – The scientific study of the origin, the behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of humans.

Archeologist- an anthropologist who studies prehistoric people and their culture

Economist- a specialist in economics.

Historian- an expert in history; authority on history.

Linguist- a person who is skilled in several languages; polyglot.

Theologian- a person who is learned in the field of study and analysis that treats of God and of God’s attributes and relations to the universe; study of divine things or religious truth; divinity.

Who are the Aztecs?
The Aztecs are Native American people who lived in Mexico during the 14th century, the 15th century and the 16th century
What made them a civilization?

Is there evidence today of Aztec influence?

Step 1:
Where did the Aztecs originally live? – Valley of Mexico, Anahuac.  What prompted them to relocate? – They were too wild and nasty, so they were driven away.
Where did they end up and why? – Swampy area near Lake Texcoco, named Tenochtitlan because he was told to look out for an eagle perched on a cactus, growing from a rock or cave surrounded by water.
Choose an artifact, which you feel best, represents this event.

Support your choiceStep 2:
The Aztecs ended up in the middle of a lake and built their new capital Tenochtitlan. What were the pros and cons of settling in the middle of a lake? Describe the lay of the land and chose an image for your exhibit.
The land was marshy and snake-infested. They used irrigation to grow crops and hold mud by planting trees.

Step 3:
Which gods were worshiped? The pyramids were built for what purpose?
The sun god, Huitzilopochtli, Tezcatlipoca, Quetzalcoatl, Tlaloc, Chalchiuhtlicue.
They built temples to do sacrifice
Step 4:
Who are the different members of Aztec society? What are their roles? Choose an artifact that represents the social order of Aztec society.
Slaves- the young were sold to others temporary until they have enough money to buy themselves freedom.
Commoners- involve in agriculture and common trade. Lowest commoners work as tenant farmers.
Nobility- These people were members of the hereditary nobility and occupied the top positions in the government, the army and the priesthood.

Step 5:
The Aztecs have a spoken language. What was it called? Did they use any other forms of communication? Include an example of either written or visual language of the Aztecs.
The Aztecs were Nahua-speaking people, they also uses pictograph to communicate through writing.

Step 6:
How did the Aztecs grow food and what was their main crop? Did they trade and with whom? Did they have a currency (money)? Find an image for your exhibit about making a living Aztec style.
The Aztecs had several ways of growing crops. They would make terrace that descends down to help the flow of water irrigate the crops. They too used the Olmec’s ‘slash and burn’ technique. Besides that, they had to grow crops for a huge population by weaving reed mats together to extend their crops into the swampy areas. Their main crops were corn, chili peppers, squash, tomatoes, beans, etc. They traded with merchants from different cities called the pochteca. They don’t really have a currency, they just use cacao beans as their main trades.

Step 7:
Discuss the Impact of Spanish Contact 1519 from both the Aztec point of view and the Spanish point of view. Find an image depicting this event.
The Aztecs thought they finally found their god, Quetzalcoatl as they mistaken him for being light skin with a beard. Cortez took opportunity to rule this empire. The Aztecs were betrayed and fooled, they decided to drove Cortez away, but they were in no position because Cortez was armed with many soldiers. Soon, they lose.

Step 8:
Discuss La Malinche or Dona Marina. Debate her positive/negative impact on Mexico past and present. What does the term Mestizo refer to? What influences remain today from Aztec culture of the past?