Hi all!
What a fantastic first week back! Truly, this has been the best start to a school year I have ever had. The class dynamics of each one of my class periods is focused and positive; the students are so precious and polite, and we are off and rolling! It feels good. We're actually well into content and it feels like we've been together for longer than one week.
7th Grade:
This week in 7th grade Social Studies we discussed The Gilded Age, which is the time period at the end of the 19th century, following the U.S. Civil War. The Gilded Age is defined by big, unregulated business (laissez-faire economics, the Gospel of Success, the Gospel of Wealth, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act) and robber-barons/tycoons such as Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.
We start each class period with a 3-6 minute writing assignment that leads us into the day's topic and lesson. Some examples from this week were: "What might these images tell us about The Gilded Age? Describe what you see. Compare and contrast this set of images and analyze what they might symbolize about the era." And, "In your opinion, what might be some positive effects of imperialism? Some negative effects? Is the U.S. imperialistic today? In the past?"
7th graders also did some reading from Flocabulary, and performed sections of a hip-hop song about The Gilded Age.
Today (Friday), 7th graders took a map pretest over Canada; the quiz is one week from today, Friday, August 19th; the quiz will cover the Canadian provinces. Students have two Study Guides for reference, and I'll be sharing with them some other study tools early next week.
8th Grade:
This week in 8th grade Social Studies we jumped right into learning about the U.S. government. Students wrote and shared journal responses to questions such as, "What words, phrases, facts, opinions, or images come to mind when you think of the term, 'Government'?" And, "Write down anything and everything you know (or think you know) about the U.S. government." I have been so pleased at the high level of student participation in our group discussions, as well as the high level thinking the kids have been bringing to the table about this topic!
8th graders did some reading from Flocabulary about the American Revolution and performed a hip-hop song that summarized the reading; we're not going to spend any more time covering the Revolutionary War (because our unit is really about U.S. government), but I think it's extremely important (if not necessary) to review and discuss the basic historic context from which the key documents (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights) arose.
There are a TON of vocabulary terms that go along with this unit; because of this we will be laying aside our regular map quizzes and temporarily replacing them with vocab quizzes. 8th graders took a pretest today over six terms: Government, Politics, Anarchy, Ideology, Sovereignty, Federalism; the quiz will be next Friday, August 19th.
Please be aware that I am continuing to post homework assignments and upcoming quizzes and due dates on my class Twitter account: @MsHoodsHoodlums
This week was truly one of the best weeks of teaching I have ever had! I am so looking forward to the year-- I can tell it's going to be a positive and productive one!
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Have a great weekend!
Take care,
Leah Hood
