Hello everyone!
I hope you all enjoyed your Spring Break! I certainly did. I didn't do too much this time, which was perfect. Visited family in Iowa, read a lot, and did some spring cleaning.
This quarter in Social Studies we will be studying lots of different units! We will also be finishing our This I Believe projects, and the Legislative Draft project.
In 7th grade we will begin this quarter by finishing up with the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, and New Deal; then we will end the school year by studying WW2. Today we already began reading a memoir entitled, On Hitler's Mountain, by Irmgard Hunt. It is her account of growing up in war-ridden Nazi Germany; I think this work of non-fiction is an important piece to teach about empathy and perspective. The author has some profound insights as to how we can avoid repeating the horrendous mistakes of that era. I highly recommend that parents and guardians read this book along with us! After we finish reading the memoir, we will read the novel, When My Name Was Keoko, about the Japanese occupation in Korea during WW2.
In 8th grade we will continue our study of the Cold War, focusing on McCarthyism in the U.S.; we also began reading the Forward and Introduction to the Nobel Prize winning work of historic fiction, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. (Families, please recall that there is some swearing in this book; however, we will not be reading the swear words aloud here at school. It's perfectly easy to just skip over them when we read aloud as a group. An informational email went out about this last quarter.) Later in the quarter we will study the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, at least up until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. We will also read A Raisin in the Sun as a readers' theater piece, and Iqbal; I am hoping to listen to sections of Nothing to Envy and Three Cups of Tea, but I'm not sure we'll have time for all of that!
Map quizzes will continue as usual throughout the rest of this year.
If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Thanks and take care,
Leah Hood
P.S. Don't forget about due dates and assignments on Twitter! MsHoodsHoodlums@twitter.com
