Week in Review and Coming Week: Dec. 7-18

American Studies: We started the next unit which is on the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The students are reading, note taking, blogging and preparing for class discussions. An additional component for this unit is a research project and a speech. We will be doing the research via a WebQuest. Please check out our Reconstruction WebQuest. We will spend some time in the computer lab this week working on the research aspect of the WebQuest. Be ready to hear your students asking questions about North Korea as we are connecting our American Studies work to the present day.


IB History: We continue working on the World War II unit this coming week. After some good presentations and discussions last week on various resistance movements as well as the technology of war, we will be studying the Holocaust this coming week.

December 16th is the big date for students to turn in their Internal Assessments via Google Documents. The history department policy is that no late work is accepted. A zero on this project grade would definitely damage a student's grade while also taking away the opportunity to receive feedback on his/her work. So do work with your children to be turn in their work on time.

Week in Review: November 23-December 4

American Studies: Going back to the short holiday week, we completed the Civil War unit. To see what the highlights of the unit were, ask your child to share his/her study guide that we worked on in class to create. A big part of becoming an active and independent learner is to know where to get information, how to analyze it for importance and how to synthesize it into a meaningful construct. This process is what we devoted class time to. The second part of the study guide creation process is for each student to use their knowledge to write what they know about the important people, events and actions we listed from class. They also are to outline the answers to the potential questions that we put together in their study guides.


IB History: We are now in the middle of the World War II unit. You can learn more about the project-based portion of this unit at the World War II Learning Pursuit site.  Please note that with the rash of recent illness, several seniors missed the Germany unit exam and some missed in class quizzes from last week. To make sure students don't fall further behind, I emailed them with the date of December 10th as the deadline to make up missed work. Please work to help your students be organized and proactive in their planning to make up missed work and to get their Internal Assessment rough draft in on December 16th. This will be for a project grade.