The Week in Review 9/13 - 917

For the parents of my wonderful students... I want to give you some sense of what it is we do in our classroom on a weekly basis. I hope this sparks some discussions with you and your student at home. I will also occasionally post some "Parent Homework" - This will be a collection of suggested readings, films/TV to watch, or questions to ask your students. My thought being that parents can remotely participate in our class from home and have meaningful discussions with their students. I was also fired up at the notion that parents might begin to have conversations via this blog or elsewhere about the content of the classes in which their students belong. Hopefully this becomes a useful tool.

Frosh Seminar

• I have never taught the "young ones" until this year. I must say that I have really enjoyed the process thus far. This group of students is a lot of fun to be around. This week we worked on building academic skills across curriculum. Monday we reviewed some simple math equations, later in the week we examined one method of learning vocabulary that could be used in any class. We spent two days in the Learning Center (library) getting an introduction on how to use the Learning Center efficiently. We wrapped up the week by having the mentors take the freshmen around the school in a focused manner to make sure they know where to find help in all areas of their high school careers

US History

• Our topic this week is the American Revolution. We spent some time covering the causes of the American Revolution; namely how the French and Indian War changed the imperial policies of the British government after 1763. We spent a good deal of time looking at some primary sources of the Boston Massacre which allowed us to work on developing our skills in analysis and also opened us up for a discussion about propaganda and how it was used by both the British and the Americans. We watched one episode of the TV series Liberty! from PBS. We viewed the episode titled "Reluctant Revolutionaries" which concisely described the reluctance of the revolutionary generation to cast off the British Monarchy.

American Government

• We continued our look at both the historical and philosophical foundations of our system of government. We spent a great deal of time last week talking about John Locke and the Natural Rights Philosophy and compared that to the idea of classical republicanism. We took our first quiz last week that we didn't do as well on as we would have hoped. SO we took some class time last week to make some quiz corrections and bring up those quiz scores slightly. This week we moved into more concrete historical influences, namely the role of British Government and how it influenced our country. We started by looking at the Magna Carta from 1215 and traced British notions of "virtual representation" through the creation of our Articles of Confederation (1777). We analyzed the Articles and I had the students paraphrase sections from the Articles and we discussed in class the weaknesses of the document and why it needed to be changed. Yesterday we finished watching Liberty! Episode 6 from PBS. This episode described the reasons for calling a convention to amend the Articles and explains why the delegates who met in Philadelphia ended up changing the government completely. The film concluded with a brief description of the ratification debates over the new Constitution. Next week we will take an in depth look at three of the suggested plans of government that were proposed at the Convention and we will pay special attention to Mr. Madison's plan which is the basis for our current system of government. We will wrap up next week with a Federalist/Anti-Federalist debate about the merits of the Constitution. Monday, the students will also be given some specifics about the mock election that all of the government classes will be running in Sept. and Oct. Reminder for the students: you need to email me your book choice by Tues. at 2:30.

PARENTS HOMEWORK:

• Come to parent night next Wednesday.
• Gov./US History Parents - You may want to read 1776 by David McCullough or my favorite book Founding Brothers by Joesph Ellis. Both books give you a nice sense of the Revolutionary period in American History. Ellis' book is a good read and he crafts a really nice narrative. McCullough is a more traditional history book. If you have any interest in the French and Indian War I would suggest the book The War that Made America by Fred Anderson or the PBS documentary of the same name. The novel The Last of the Mohicans is also set during that time period. I attempted to read that book long ago and I couldn't get into it, but the movie is fairly good. The novel version is also an AR book as is 1776 if your student needs AR points for their English class. If they pass the AR test they can get a little bit of extra credit in my class.
• Frosh parents - ask your students about the social and academic goals they set in 1* and see how much progress they have made towards those goals. Also, encourage them to bring their AR book to class everyday. They will start to get time in class to read these books.
• Parent Portal to Infinite Campus opens on Monday.