Friday, April 27, 2012
Week 3, Q4
(Please note: I apologize for the formatting and aesthetics of this post; I have tried repeatedly to correct it but it will not recognize spaces between paragraphs! This has never happened before. Hopefully this issue will resolve itself before my next post. Thanks for your patience.)
The Great Depression & The Civil Rights Movement
Hello, Paideia families!
This week in Social Studies we were pretty much back to normal after MCA testing last week; some students still had to be pulled from classes for make-up testing throughout the week, but other than that we were back to our normal routine.
Here's the update:
7th grade:
This week we read a few more chapters in our novel about the Great Depression. We are almost (finally!) finished reading The Truth About Sparrows; we hope to finish up with this by the end of next week, when we plan to wrap-up our study of the Great Depression and New Deal. Students watched the PBS documentary Landslide, about the presidency of Herbert Hoover, and completed a film guide aimed at building and assessing comprehension and analysis about the topic. Students used a PBS online timeline and packet of graphic organizers to define and describe terms relating to the Great Depression and New Deal. Students also tested over countries in northwest Africa, such as the Ivory Coast and Senegal. Next week students will pretest over countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and make posters about the Great Depression and New Deal for display in the hallway.
Lastly, students received detailed grading rubrics and expectations for their 5-paragraph essays and oral/visual presentations of their independent research, both due June 7th. All weekly research assignments are due Monday, May 7th; these have been assigned weekly since the start of Q3; students have had time in Computers class each week to work on these assignments.
8th grade:
We made lots of progress in our learning about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement this week! Students used a PBS online timeline and The History Channel website to define and describe key terms (people and events) of the movement and record their notes in a packet of graphic organizers. Students also worked in pairs to make mini-posters about key people and events in the Civil Rights Movement and we used these posters to create a timeline in the hallway; students then read each others' posters and summarized each term in a packet. We ended the week breaking into two small groups to do some direct instruction about different philosophies within the Civil Rights Movement. Next week we will read the class play, A Raisin in the Sun, readers' theater-style in class, and study music of the Civil Rights Movement.
Lastly, students received detailed grading rubrics and expectations for their 5-paragraph essays and oral/visual presentations of their independent research, both due June 7th. All weekly research assignments are due Monday, May 7th; these have been assigned weekly since the start of Q3; students have had time in Computers class each week to work on these assignments.
If you have any questions or concerns about your child in Social Studies, please feel free to contact me. We're already approaching midterm!
Have a nice weekend,
Ms. Hood
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
MCAs!
Hello, Paideia families!
This week is MCA testing, school-wide, so I only see each group of students two times this week instead of five. During those two class periods, though, we are moving forward in our studies! Here's what we're up to:
7th Grade:
We are now almost finished with the novel, The Truth About Sparrows; some of the predominant themes at this point in the plot are hard work, change, loneliness, friendship, and sacrifice. Woven throughout the novel are interesting little tidbits of information about daily life for Americans impacted by the Great Depression, such as making mattresses using chicken feathers and listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio. Today we read Ch. 18 in class; I read aloud while the students did a "Listen and Draw" activity to create a pictoral summary of events in the chapter.
Also in the past week, we watched a PBS documentary entitled, "Surviving The Dust Bowl", and made a "musical timeline" of Woody Guthrie song lyrics to chronicle the era.
Next week 7th graders will be tested over countries in Northwest Africa, such as Senegal and the Ivory Coast. We will also analyze cartoons from the 1930s as primary sources, recording evidence of, for example, standards of beauty and strength, as well as stereotypes of men and women from the period. We'll continue to study different aspects of the 1930s and 40s until about midterm this quarter, at which point we'll move on to WW2.
8th Grade:
Last week in Social Studies I was sincerely impressed with the students' analysis and discussion of primary sources from the Harlem Renaissance; we looked at paintings, photographs, music, and poetry to examine themes of the movement. I worked directly with the "Paintings" station, and with some prompting cues, students were noticing some very high-level similarities between all the paintings at the station and discussing the literal and figurative meanings of the images!
This week we have continued to look more closely at the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1950s and 60s. We just started watching excerpts from the PBS series, "Eyes On The Prize"; today's excerpt focused on the murder of Emmett Till. Future excerpts will cover the full spectrum of "classic" Civil Rights Movement people and events, including MLK Jr., Rosa Parks, Freedom Summer, and the Little Rock 9, among others.
Next week we will do a series of lessons looking at "Freedom Songs" from the Civil Rights era; students will analyze song lyrics, messages, and rhythm and draw comparisons to political and social events from the same time period.
Students have a homework assignment due next Friday, April 27th; it is a reading packet over Black history with some comprehension and response questions.
We will continue to study the 1960s and 70s until about midterm, at which point we will shift to finish out the school year studying the 1980s and 90s.
All 7th and 8th grade students have Quia study activities available as supplementary learning activities outside of class; detailed DDI Study Guides for our Q4 units will be distributed next Monday, following MCAs. Also, all 7th and 8th graders continue to make progress in their independent country research projects; this past week their research topic in Computers class was "Free Choice" research. Next week students will research Travel & Leisure in their countries by creating a one-week vacation inside their countries; this will include hotels and restaurants, sports, national parks, arts and entertainment, and historic sites within various countries in the world.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me with questions, concerns, or constructive feedback!
Thanks for reading!
-Ms. Hood
This week is MCA testing, school-wide, so I only see each group of students two times this week instead of five. During those two class periods, though, we are moving forward in our studies! Here's what we're up to:
7th Grade:
We are now almost finished with the novel, The Truth About Sparrows; some of the predominant themes at this point in the plot are hard work, change, loneliness, friendship, and sacrifice. Woven throughout the novel are interesting little tidbits of information about daily life for Americans impacted by the Great Depression, such as making mattresses using chicken feathers and listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio. Today we read Ch. 18 in class; I read aloud while the students did a "Listen and Draw" activity to create a pictoral summary of events in the chapter.
Also in the past week, we watched a PBS documentary entitled, "Surviving The Dust Bowl", and made a "musical timeline" of Woody Guthrie song lyrics to chronicle the era.
Next week 7th graders will be tested over countries in Northwest Africa, such as Senegal and the Ivory Coast. We will also analyze cartoons from the 1930s as primary sources, recording evidence of, for example, standards of beauty and strength, as well as stereotypes of men and women from the period. We'll continue to study different aspects of the 1930s and 40s until about midterm this quarter, at which point we'll move on to WW2.
8th Grade:
Last week in Social Studies I was sincerely impressed with the students' analysis and discussion of primary sources from the Harlem Renaissance; we looked at paintings, photographs, music, and poetry to examine themes of the movement. I worked directly with the "Paintings" station, and with some prompting cues, students were noticing some very high-level similarities between all the paintings at the station and discussing the literal and figurative meanings of the images!
This week we have continued to look more closely at the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. during the 1950s and 60s. We just started watching excerpts from the PBS series, "Eyes On The Prize"; today's excerpt focused on the murder of Emmett Till. Future excerpts will cover the full spectrum of "classic" Civil Rights Movement people and events, including MLK Jr., Rosa Parks, Freedom Summer, and the Little Rock 9, among others.
Next week we will do a series of lessons looking at "Freedom Songs" from the Civil Rights era; students will analyze song lyrics, messages, and rhythm and draw comparisons to political and social events from the same time period.
Students have a homework assignment due next Friday, April 27th; it is a reading packet over Black history with some comprehension and response questions.
We will continue to study the 1960s and 70s until about midterm, at which point we will shift to finish out the school year studying the 1980s and 90s.
All 7th and 8th grade students have Quia study activities available as supplementary learning activities outside of class; detailed DDI Study Guides for our Q4 units will be distributed next Monday, following MCAs. Also, all 7th and 8th graders continue to make progress in their independent country research projects; this past week their research topic in Computers class was "Free Choice" research. Next week students will research Travel & Leisure in their countries by creating a one-week vacation inside their countries; this will include hotels and restaurants, sports, national parks, arts and entertainment, and historic sites within various countries in the world.
As always, please do not hesitate to contact me with questions, concerns, or constructive feedback!
Thanks for reading!
-Ms. Hood
Friday, April 6, 2012
Welcome back to Fourth Quarter!
Welcome back from a beautiful Spring Break!
I hope you all had as restful and enjoyable a break as I did. I often fill my breaks with trainings and travels, but this time I took it easy. It felt really nice. I visited some friends and family in Iowa, but aside from that I just putzed around, really :)
Here's a summary of what we'll be studying during Q4 in Social Studies:
7th Grade:
This quarter in 7th grade Social Studies we'll be concentrating on the 1930s and 1940s. We spent most of last quarter studying U.S. history in the 1920s, covering topics such as Women's Suffrage, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929. We'll start of this new quarter looking at the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, and New Deal; all that will take us up until about midterm. Then the latter half of this last quarter we'll focus on WW2-- an epic topic. We'll look at WW2 from the angles of the European and Pacific theaters, "the homefront" in the U.S., and marginally from "the rest of the world", including places such as Africa and Central and South America (places less directly impacted by the war). We will, of course, learn about the Holocaust during this unit, and will also look at the Japanese internment camps in the U.S.; after we finish up reading The Truth About Sparrows, students will choose from one of four WW2-themed novels and participate in Literature Circles. Book choices include: The Diary of Anne Frank, On Hitler's Mountain, When My Name Was Keoko, and A Farewell to Manzanar.
8th Grade:
This quarter in 8th grade Social Studies we'll be concentrating on the 1960s-80s U.S. and world history. Last quarter we concentrated on the early Cold War in the U.S. and abroad; in Language Arts students read The Red Scarf Girl, which supported our Social Studies unit on Mao's China; in Social Studies we learned a lot about the Soviet Union and McCarthyism in the U.S., and finished off last quarter learning about the Korean War, Bay of Pigs Invasion, and Cuban Missile Crisis.
In this new quarter we'll learn more about the presidencies of JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan; we'll also learn about the Civil Rights Movement (and read A Raisin in the Sun), social activism in the U.S., the Vietnam War, and the Middle East and oil politics. We'll cover topics such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Singing Revolution in the Baltic states, Tiananmen Square, and the Iranian Revolution. We'll get as close to 2012 in history as time allows!
Throughout all of this, all 7th and 8th graders will continue working on their independent country research projects. The weekly research topics and assignments we've been working on since the end of Q2 will be put towards a 5 Paragraph Essay and an oral and visual presentation; both the essay and oral/visual presentation will be due at the very end of the quarter/school year.
Whew! That's a lot, but we'll do our best :)
Please don't forget that I post homework and due dates on my class Twitter account (@MsHoodsHoodlums).
Please always feel free to contact me with questions, concerns, and constructive feedback!
See you next week!
Thanks,
Ms. Hood
I hope you all had as restful and enjoyable a break as I did. I often fill my breaks with trainings and travels, but this time I took it easy. It felt really nice. I visited some friends and family in Iowa, but aside from that I just putzed around, really :)
Here's a summary of what we'll be studying during Q4 in Social Studies:
7th Grade:
This quarter in 7th grade Social Studies we'll be concentrating on the 1930s and 1940s. We spent most of last quarter studying U.S. history in the 1920s, covering topics such as Women's Suffrage, Prohibition, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Stock Market Crash of 1929. We'll start of this new quarter looking at the Dust Bowl, Great Depression, and New Deal; all that will take us up until about midterm. Then the latter half of this last quarter we'll focus on WW2-- an epic topic. We'll look at WW2 from the angles of the European and Pacific theaters, "the homefront" in the U.S., and marginally from "the rest of the world", including places such as Africa and Central and South America (places less directly impacted by the war). We will, of course, learn about the Holocaust during this unit, and will also look at the Japanese internment camps in the U.S.; after we finish up reading The Truth About Sparrows, students will choose from one of four WW2-themed novels and participate in Literature Circles. Book choices include: The Diary of Anne Frank, On Hitler's Mountain, When My Name Was Keoko, and A Farewell to Manzanar.
8th Grade:
This quarter in 8th grade Social Studies we'll be concentrating on the 1960s-80s U.S. and world history. Last quarter we concentrated on the early Cold War in the U.S. and abroad; in Language Arts students read The Red Scarf Girl, which supported our Social Studies unit on Mao's China; in Social Studies we learned a lot about the Soviet Union and McCarthyism in the U.S., and finished off last quarter learning about the Korean War, Bay of Pigs Invasion, and Cuban Missile Crisis.
In this new quarter we'll learn more about the presidencies of JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan; we'll also learn about the Civil Rights Movement (and read A Raisin in the Sun), social activism in the U.S., the Vietnam War, and the Middle East and oil politics. We'll cover topics such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Singing Revolution in the Baltic states, Tiananmen Square, and the Iranian Revolution. We'll get as close to 2012 in history as time allows!
Throughout all of this, all 7th and 8th graders will continue working on their independent country research projects. The weekly research topics and assignments we've been working on since the end of Q2 will be put towards a 5 Paragraph Essay and an oral and visual presentation; both the essay and oral/visual presentation will be due at the very end of the quarter/school year.
Whew! That's a lot, but we'll do our best :)
Please don't forget that I post homework and due dates on my class Twitter account (@MsHoodsHoodlums).
Please always feel free to contact me with questions, concerns, and constructive feedback!
See you next week!
Thanks,
Ms. Hood
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