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Week 19: January 8-12

Welcome: 

We are officially done with our 19th week of school and on to the last week of the second quarter. It's amazing to me how much time flies (and it seems to be going faster now that my own son is in 8th grade). The school started a Penny Wars competition sponsored by our Positive Behavior and Interventions Support team this week. Additionally, the students also started thinking about the courses they'd like to take when we watched the video about available electives from the high school. The video is 35 minutes long and has a ton of great information--here it is if you'd like to watch it for yourself. 



Social Studies (1, 5 and 6)

This Past Week: 

  • Wars for the West Key Terms: The students worked in groups to identify and explain each of the terms that we will be discussing throughout the week. This activity was meant to introduce them to the topics we'll discuss and to practice researching. 
  • Indian Wars Iron Chef: The students worked in the same groups, but this time they were creating a presentation to share with the class. Each student became an "expert" on one event from the 1800s and then did a QUICK (30-60 second) presentation to the class about the topic. This activity was meant to help them learn content as well as practice presenting to their classmates. 
  • List-Group-Label: This was the final activity of the week and the only one that was graded. The students made copies of the Wars for the West Key Terms they created earlier this week and then used them to do an activity called List-Group-Label. 

Next Week: 

  • 50 States Map Quiz: The students were given a map of the United States and were asked to practice identifying the states so that they could play the game for a grade before the end of next week. 
  • Content Check #6: This will be the final content check-in of the quarter and will cover information about the Clash of Cultures and the Indian Wars. 
  • Clash of Cultures Final Project: Finally, the students will have the opportunity to select a product to create to help them make sense of all of the information we discussed over the past few weeks in terms of relations between the Native American tribes and the US government in the 1800s.  

Accelerated Social Studies (3 and 8) 

This past week was all about the student's podcasting project. The students worked on finishing their research for the podcast, signing up for Spotify for Podcasters, and starting to outline their episodes. This is all the students will be doing next week as well. The students will need to have their completed episode recorded and uploaded to the Google Classroom by Monday, January 22, 2024, at 9:00 PM. 


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