As we move into the last phase of our journey, 7-1 students should acclimate themselves to embracing a rousing finale to their journeys of scholarship. The final exam for second trimester is now of the past. Students can access their grades online through mygradebook.com and see how they fared. The extra credit tasks for the Constitution will be the last official grades of second trimester (due Thursday, 3/6). If students are content with their performance, then the grade listed in the summary is the grade that will stand. However, should students feel the need to improve their current standing, then completing the extra credit tasks this long weekend might prove beneficial.
In terms of next week, we begin our study of the presidencies of Washington and Adams. The discussion will also reveal the growth of political parties and the pros and cons of partisanship. We will close the week with a speak/ write lecture on the Alien and Sedition Acts, as well as a prologue into the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. The next major assessment for students will be a teaching assignment where they will have to assume the burden of designing a unit around a particular theme of the Jeffersonian presidency. This will lead us into Spring Break, with the actual teaching to take place upon our return. After this, we will be sprinting towards the end with a study of American modernism and the growth between North and South, culminating in our study of the Civil War.
The expectation is that this trimester will be the hardest students have endured. Social Studies extra credit opportunities will be phased out as the trimester progresses, as the work will increase in difficulty. After their teaching assignments, students will have to make some critical choices in terms of coverage of material. One of my hopes for this trimester is that students employ their sense of autonomy in making critical decisions about their academic states of being. I hope to be laying out options to students in methods of covering chapters 11- 14 in different and unique manners. We will be relying on the textbook, primary sources, literature, as well as other tools which will help illuminate the growth of America, and clearly highlight the themes and challenges of modern America.
In the final analysis, third trimester should offer diverse and multiple approaches to content. One of the themes of a middle school education is creating different paths that brighten a child’s way on the path of understanding and scholarship. In our current state of “reexamining” middle school philosophy, I can only hope that we do not “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and gear everything towards the needs of the few, while sacrificing the needs of the many. I hope that third trimester creates settings where all children are offered their own senses of individualized instruction and differentiated modalities that show the execution of the learning process. (It would be exciting if all students engaged in independent study projects. This would no longer be a terrain dominated by the few, but open to all and able to be embraced by all.) By making the connection between choice and learning, I believe that we fulfill a primary tenet of middle school education in creating the life long learner, whose constructivist base allows them a greater success in all realms of learning.
As students enter the third trimester, perhaps they can best understand the experience as beginning the process of departure, where a new door of perception will be opened as more songs in the garden await their arrival into the world. The songs of this trimester, the last one, await.
All best.
Mr. Kannan
In terms of next week, we begin our study of the presidencies of Washington and Adams. The discussion will also reveal the growth of political parties and the pros and cons of partisanship. We will close the week with a speak/ write lecture on the Alien and Sedition Acts, as well as a prologue into the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. The next major assessment for students will be a teaching assignment where they will have to assume the burden of designing a unit around a particular theme of the Jeffersonian presidency. This will lead us into Spring Break, with the actual teaching to take place upon our return. After this, we will be sprinting towards the end with a study of American modernism and the growth between North and South, culminating in our study of the Civil War.
The expectation is that this trimester will be the hardest students have endured. Social Studies extra credit opportunities will be phased out as the trimester progresses, as the work will increase in difficulty. After their teaching assignments, students will have to make some critical choices in terms of coverage of material. One of my hopes for this trimester is that students employ their sense of autonomy in making critical decisions about their academic states of being. I hope to be laying out options to students in methods of covering chapters 11- 14 in different and unique manners. We will be relying on the textbook, primary sources, literature, as well as other tools which will help illuminate the growth of America, and clearly highlight the themes and challenges of modern America.
In the final analysis, third trimester should offer diverse and multiple approaches to content. One of the themes of a middle school education is creating different paths that brighten a child’s way on the path of understanding and scholarship. In our current state of “reexamining” middle school philosophy, I can only hope that we do not “throw the baby out with the bathwater” and gear everything towards the needs of the few, while sacrificing the needs of the many. I hope that third trimester creates settings where all children are offered their own senses of individualized instruction and differentiated modalities that show the execution of the learning process. (It would be exciting if all students engaged in independent study projects. This would no longer be a terrain dominated by the few, but open to all and able to be embraced by all.) By making the connection between choice and learning, I believe that we fulfill a primary tenet of middle school education in creating the life long learner, whose constructivist base allows them a greater success in all realms of learning.
As students enter the third trimester, perhaps they can best understand the experience as beginning the process of departure, where a new door of perception will be opened as more songs in the garden await their arrival into the world. The songs of this trimester, the last one, await.
All best.
Mr. Kannan
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