POST: Week 2, Day 1, Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Today we began serious study of the book. I remind you: you should have read and digested 78 pages of the book by Friday of next week (Week 3). You should have the book with you EVERY day from this point on.

We talked about how to write short answer/identification questions. We did a practice with the word Basques (X).

The first questions that you need to think about are:

Who/what is/are X?
Then you need to think about questions such as when/where did X occur? What did X do and why did X do it?

Finally, and most important, you need to connect X to the subject of the book: Cod: A biography of a fish that changed the world. So you need to think about questions such as:
What was the relationship of X to cod?
How was X connected to cod?

Then you need to write your answer out in a short paragraph of about five sentences.

Example: The Basques are a group of people from southern France and Northern Spain. In the Middle Ages, they developed cod fishing and whaling in the far reaches of the North Atlantic. Using salt cure, they successfully sold their fish to Catholic Europeans who were prohibited from eating meat, but who were allowed to eat fish, on half the days of the year.