Crater Lake, which is Oregon's only National Park. Maybe a symbol of your new nation? Photo taken in August 2014.
Hi wonderful students,
Great to see you all again today! It was a quiz and work day in class. Here's what happened today:
Learning Targets:
Knowledge LT 2: I can demonstrate an understanding of the role of governments in current issues.
Knowledge LT 4: I can explain how different ideological movements and philosophies shape politics.
Soundtrack: "If I Ruled the World" by Nas and Lauryn Hill. Selected for today because you were creating your own countries today in class!
AGENDA 2/24/16:
News Brief – Kendall
Philosophy Quiz
Declaration of Independence/Articles of Confederation
Creation of a Nation
Homework: Read the blog. Be ready to finish the Creation of a Nation activity next class. Next news brief: Mariah.
News Brief: Kendall had the news brief today and selected this article about this story to talk about: CNN.com - Supreme Court rules in favor of death row inmate. We discussed this story (as well as the right to a lawyer) for a while at the start of class.
Related to this, we discussed the recent transgender students directive from the Department of Justice and noted that the state of Oregon still has protections for transgender students.
Mariah was selected for the next news brief.
Philosophy Quiz: Because I'm a nice guy, I gave the class about five minutes to study for this (even though it was homework to do so). I haven't read the responses yet, but basically, if you knew the four philosophers from the first reading, and knew the basics of the European influences reading, you should have been fine. If you need to take this, please come find me before or after school. I will grade these and get them back to you as soon as I can.
Declaration of Independence/Articles of Confederation: Next up, we had a brief lecture in class about the early foundations of the United States government and some of the forms of government in the world. To begin, we looked at the Declaration of Independence and at some of the reasons the United States "broke up" with Great Britain. After this, I had students write their own break up letter, using some of the same reasons outlined in the text of the Declaration of Independence.
Next, we moved on to learning about the first government of the United States. The Articles of Confederation was the first way that the country was organized, and we looked at how it was not good enough to really keep the states together in any coherent way. Here's the reading notes that I showed in class:
Please know the basics here for future use!
Creation of a Nation: The last activity we did today in class was to start thinking about creating your own nation, which is a break away of some of the western states from the United States. In groups of 2 or 3, this is the assignment, which we will finish working on next class and present. Again, I want every group to make a flag for their new country, because flags are awesome. Please see the document for specifics as to what each group member should do.
Next class, we will continue with this and then move on to studying the Constitution. Thanks! See you next class!
Hi Mr.Fritz,
ReplyDeleteI apologize for the lateness, but because I was out on Friday I was wondering when you thought was the best time to take the quiz?
Thank you.
Hi there!
DeleteEither lunch works for me! Come see me in Lower North at the start. Thanks!