Creation of a Nation, Day 2 - Class Recap

The World War I Memorial Stonehenge replica in Goldendale, Washington, overlooking the Columbia River Gorge and Mt. Hood. Photo taken in 2015!

Hi everyone,

I enjoyed hearing about your new countries today in class, as we continued to look at the basics of how the United States government works and specifically, the Constitution. 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 5: I can demonstrate an understanding of the principles, structures, and functions of different branches of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: "Power [Radio Edit]" by Kanye West. Selected for today because "no one man should have all that power" when it comes to government, which the Constitution made sure of!

AGENDA 2/28/17:
News Brief – Faith
Declaration of Independence
Create Nations
Share

Homework: Read the blog. Finish your Creation of a Nation project if you did not in class! Next news brief: Crystal.

News Brief: Faith had the news brief today and talked about the article: NYTimes.com - 2 Weeks After Trump Blocked It, Democrats’ Rebuttal of G.O.P. Memo Is Released. We discussed this story for a bit and also checked in about what we were up to over the weekend, before moving on. I apologized again for not being here last class! As such, I wanted to make sure students knew not to stress out too much about the Creation of a Nation assignment.

Crystal was selected for the next news brief.

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:

Google Drive: Forms of Government and Articles of Confederation

Please know the basics here for future use!

Share Nations: Again, this was creating your own nation, which is a break away of some of the western states from the United States. In groups of 2, this was the assignment: 

Google Drive - Creation of a Nation Assignment

Next class, we will listen to these presentations and hear about your proposed ideas for what a new country should look like! Thank you for your effort on this. We will continue learning about the foundations of the United States government next class!