Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

Historians examined one of the most important cases in U. S. Supreme Court history: the Dred Scott Decision. This decision was a huge step backward for all those against slavery and it directly impacted the course of American History.   Students analyzed the decision in four ways; writing down what they noticed about the court case, generating questions that were raised by it, examining viewpoints from the people/groups impacted by the decision, and what they felt the heart of the issue dealt with. This type of analysis is called "peeling the fruit" because students are thinking and working toward the heart or core of the topic being studied. Student answers were deep and meaningful--I will post some examples tomorrow. 

My Historians have been learning about life in the North before the Civil War. The Industrial Revolution in America meant that factories were being built in large numbers and people, especially women and young girls, were going into the workforce like never before. Students examined the pros and cons of factory life through autobiographic excerpts, video clips, and short readings. This research resulted in students creating haiku poetry to express their views on whether the dangers associated with factory work were worth the financial independence. Here are a few examples:   Poor young girls are trapped At first a new adventure Now an old prison -Bella   Some workers were kids They don't earn much for their work Smoke sometimes kills them -Brendan   Waking up early To work in the factory How this work pains me -Saloni   The life is awful Factories are not lawful It's not wonderful -Jeff   It is hard to b...

Students evaluated their knowledge of westward expansion through the creation of a concept map.  Each student generated a list of important people, places, events, and ideas from class work. Student groups then sorted their lists into concepts with the main ideas in the center of the web, less essential ideas toward the edges.  Students had to develop connections and wrote connection sentences. The final step was to have each student create a persuasive paragraph about westward expansion. This routine enables students to have a deep understanding of the topics covered in class and see how the small ideas in the chapter can create a "big picture" understanding of US History.

The historians in my classes are analyzing the presidency of Andrew Jackson and will determine if they feel he was a hero or a villain by writing an essay. To prepare them for this essay they viewed his biography yesterday.   The activity during and after viewing was to analyze seven events/time periods in his life (his childhood and military career, for example) and justify each on a scale of +6 to -6. Students then created a line graph with their rankings. Today's whole class discussion centered around many student graph examples, with classmates comparing and contrasting other line graphs to their own. We had insightful discussions in every class period and these young historians were able to verbally articulate and formulate justifications for their rankings. It was a great end to the week!

Today's activity enabled students to process America's foreign policy stance since it was developed in the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. The Doctrine was written to protect many newly-independent nations in Latin America from any possible European colonization. It states that the United States would consider colonization as a threat to its own safety and would take appropriate measures to counteract it.   Students were asked to think of instances that the United States has gone into other countries on both peace-keeping and military actions. They were then given the task of analyzing this essential statement:   America should be the world's peacekeepers .   Students needed to explain what excites them about this statement, what worries them about it, what more they need to know in order to come to a conclusion, and finally formulate their stance on the issue. The small group discussion was very lively, full of critical t...

The topics of nationalism and sectionalism relating to American culture were the focus of today's class.   Students had a great discussion of the definition of culture and we examined a sketch ("Crossing of Carson River" by Lt. J.H. Simpson) determine what aspects of the sketch showed American culture in the early 1800s. Students then defined nationalism and sectionalism and discussed whether a person could show loyalty to both their country and region if forced to choose. Today's themes are "big picture" themes in US History for the rest of the school year and I'm glad that students were able to use much of their prior knowledge in order to learn about and think about the issues during the time leading up to the US Civil War.   http://docsteach.org/documents/305640/detail?menu=closed&mode=search&sortBy=relevance&q=utah

This week students will conduct an online primary source research activity about the Lewis and Clark Expedition from either the US Government and the Native American perspective. Students will analyze four documents from the National Archives online library and determine what the documents meant for their selected group of people. The link to the activity is found here: http://docsteach.org/activities/18014