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Week Nine: Friday, October 27, 2023

Welcome: 

I simply can't believe we are already done with the ninth week of school and almost finished the month of October and the first marking period! The district finished up our Make a Difference Day drive and was able to donate a bus full of food and personal products to the North Coventry Food Pantry. 

I actually ended up showing two videos on Friday this week. The first video I decided to show this week is about a cancer survivor who climbed Mount Everest with only one functioning lung. Then, as we were watching the first video I remembered a second clip about one of my former wrestlers who also overcame some obstacles to climb Mt. Everest so I showed that one as well. I hope you enjoy it! 





Social Studies (Periods 1, 5 and 6)

This Past Week:

  • Monday:We started the week by playing the Gimkit for the third and final content check before doing a quick content burst about the principles of the US Constitution. Finally, the students worked on their #036-Three Branches of Government Mastery Grids. 
  • Tuesday: 
  • Wednesday: We continued with the work on the Mastery Grid today. Today was the first day that all of the students were finished with their Common Craft videos (in most classes) so it provided us a great opportunity to do a reflection on their work so far for the Mastery Grid to see what they need from me in order to be successful. 
  • Thursday: We started today with a quick discussion of the three branches of government and the system of checks and balances before the students played the Gimkit & worked on their #036-Three Branches of Government mastery grids. 
  • Friday: The students spent time working on their #039-The Jobs of the Three Branches assignment today to help them better understand the system of checks and balances in our government. 

This Upcoming Week: 

  • Content Check #3: The students will take the third content quiz on Thursday, November 2.  There are review materials available to the students in the Course Materials section of our Google Classroom. 
  • Three Branches Infographic: The students will start the week by creating infographics about the three branches of government. The infographics are meant to help the students better understand how our government is laid out and functions. 
  • The Electoral College: We'll discuss the process by which we elect the president later in the week. 

Accelerated Social Studies (Periods 3 and 8)

This Past Week:

  • Monday: The students spent the day today researching their topics for the
  • Tuesday: The
  • Wednesday: Today is all about speech preparation and practice for the students in my accelerated classes. We put the finishing touches (or close to it) on the speeches and then the students were given time to practice their speech and provide feedback to their classmates. 
  • Thursday: Today was all about debate preparation! The students practiced delivering their speeches to their classmates and then gave each other some feedback so they'd be ready for their debates. 
  • Friday: Today is the first debate for my period 3 class and the final day of debate preparations for period 8. In addition to the debate work, the students took some time to investigate the list of available topics for the second-quarter podcast project we'll be doing. 

This Upcoming Week: 

  • Debates: We will continue with our 1st quarter debates this week in both my period 3 and 8 classes on Monday and Tuesday of this upcoming week. 
  • Quarter Two Podcast Project: The second quarter content offers some great opportunities for incredibly interesting storytelling--so that's what we'll be doing for our project this quarter. The students will be working on selecting topics they will research so that they will eventually be able to write and record their own episodes for a podcast we will produce as a class. 

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