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Week 11: Friday, November 11, 2022

 Welcome: 

The first week of the second quarter has come and gone and this year is cruising along! I'm looking forward to getting to talk to many of you during conferences in a few weeks. This week we watched a great video on not judging others on superficial things like appearances & the importance of standing with the people that often get ignored in life. I hope you take the time to watch the video--it's a great one. 



This Past Week: 

This past week was another week where both the Honor's American History & American History classes did most of the same types of learning activities so the updates are combined here. 
  • Monday: Today was all about introducing our next unit of study--"Manifest Destiny: Surviving & Thriving in the American West." We started by doing a Pear Deck flashcard factory to help introduce some key terms to the unit and then the students watched part of America the Story of Us: Westward.  
  • Tuesday: No School for Students 
  • Wednesday: The students watched two more video segments from America the Story of Us: Westward (Pioneers on the Oregon Trail & the Donner Party) and then started working on ✅ #001-America Expands to the West (the first graded assignment of this quarter). 
  • Thursday: We started today with a "Caption This" type activity. I gave the students an image of the Oregon Trail and asked them to fill out some thought/speech bubbles and to be creative. Finally, we finished America the Story of Us and the students continued to work on  ✅ #001-America Expands to the West (the first graded assignment of this quarter). 
  • Friday: We started class today by playing a Quizizz game on the information we'll discuss next week just to get a baseline for growth. The students then played a Blooket version of the same game before watching our Friday video and taking time to (hopefully) finish  ✅ #001-America Expands to the West 

Next Week:

We'll be diving into the physical growth of our nation in the 19th century this week. The focus for the first part of this quarter will be what people were willing to endure to survive and thrive in the American west. Here are a few of the things we'll be doing next week: 
  • We'll continue to play the Blooket and Quizizz throughout the week to chart growth and mastery of the content. 
  • We'll do some small content bursts about the following topics this week: 
    • The Louisiana Purchase & Lewis & Clark 
    • The Oregon Territory & the Oregon Trail 
    • The Gold Rush 
    • The Construction of the Transcontinental Railroad 
  • The students will do research on the human experience of the following groups through a variety of activities: 
    • Lewis & Clark and the Corps of Discovery 
    • The Settlers on the Oregon Trail 
    • Prospectors on the Gold Rush 
    • Chinese laborers building the Transcontinental Railroad 

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