Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

Students previewed the American Revolutionary War this week by watching an excerpt of "America: The Story of Us" created by The History Channel. My students felt that one of the most fascinating parts of the video was about the American spy network during the war. The University of Michigan has an online collection devoted to this topic and students will be analyzing primary sources and researching methods used to spy on the British while we study the war. Here is the link to the collection: http://www2.si.umich.edu/spies/

Students are currently learning about the Declaration of Indpendence and its impact today. Groups matched excerpts of the document with examples written in modern language and compared the two. They also selected which excerpts illustrated four key principles of the Declaration (and of our government today): all people are created equal, all people have basic rights that cannot be taken away, the government gets its power to make decisions and to protect rights from the people and when the government does not protect the rights of the people the people have the right to change or remove the government. The ideals of the Declaration of Indpendence are truly keystones of Government in the United States.

Students have spent time this week learning Powerwriting. This form of writing will help them organize their writing in History in a clear and concise way. Two strategies I implement that greatly ensure success with Powerwriting are the pre-writing outline and the use of highlighters. The outline enables students to formulate their thoughts easily. The use of highlighters is an organizational tool that allows students to see the flow and progression of their introductory sentence, examples, supporting details and conclusion. Powerwriting will get easier with practice and will help my students become adept at writing in History.

The American Revolution Center has created an interactive timeline of events surrounding the American Revolution (and related modern historical events about the Revolution) that I wanted to share with my students and their families. Students will be creating their own timeline of Pre-Revolutionary War events and this is a wonderful way for them to preview next week's area of study. http://timeline.americanrevolutioncenter.org/

Students will be learning about the roots of representative government and the events leading up to the American Revolutionary War this week. These concepts are "Big Picture" ideas in American History--the lack of freedoms and rights colonists experienced in the mid-1700s gave rise to rebellion and a war against the greatest military force in the world at the time. Students will create a timeline this week that will illustrate these events.

I would like to welcome all of you to US History! The first day of school went very well--we spent the morning discussing, among other things, materials needed for class and tomorrow we will do an activity to get to know one another better. Students will also receive their textbooks and begin a a textbook preview. I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you and to a successful and exciting year!

Happy Independence Day! In honor of the holiday I found a short link from the History Channel about the Declaration of Independence: http://www.history.com/topics/july-4th/videos#declaration-of-independence