Welcome to US History to 1865 From the first Americans to the founding fathers and beyond…Racing through the early centuries of America! ***Timeline Mini-Assignments & BIG Timeline for all classes…logistics & making it actually happen*** ***clean up MS Curric Units for History*** ***do setup of potential arcgis basemap assignment…have alternate paper/pencil version ready to roll***

About Me Mrs. Richards Taught for 11 years 5th year teaching US History 1 Favorite subjects in school …. Married for 35 years with 4 children: Amber Jason Ashley Ryan 1 brand new grandbaby…

Luke

What I did this summer… Attended a week long seminar Took a Duck boat tour of the city of Boston and The Boston Harbor Hung out with Thomas Jefferson

I like to attend his sporting events!

What do we study? We will look at the following over reaching questions…. How does geography influence the decisions, settlements, lifestyles, and identities of various groups of people? How does it affect political, social, and economic issues? How does it affect people and their perspectives? We will conduct an in-depth study of the following topics…. The Native Americans European Exploration Colonial America The American Revolution The Creation of a New Nation Westward Expansion… Past the Cumberland Gap! Building an American Identity The Civil War

What’s up with textbooks? We still have several sets of textbooks which will be used as needed but… We have adopted a one-to-one Chrome Book policy which will better enable us to connect to many valuable, online, up-to-date resources! All students will be trained on the new system. It is very user friendly and operates in conjunction with a new version of the Gale Resources, which many of our students have already used to research!

What about notes and Classroom work? Our in-class focus will not be on just the facts. We will be focusing on questioning and investigation. We will have many inquiry based discussions, as well as Socratic Seminars, Philosophical Chairs activities and persuasive discussions. The CLiC resource (Gale) will have some notetaking capabilities, but the bulk of our notes taken will be in our Interactive Notebooks. These will be allowed to come home for studying or finishing classwork. These notes will be apart of our “Flipped Classroom” initiative. End game: While some memorizing is needed, finding connections & relevance builds lasting understandings, so that’s what we work towards.

Cornell Notes: Part of our “Flipped Classroom” Our main notetaking tool will be Advanced Cornell Notes.

Example: Why take Cornell Notes? Cornell notes stimulate critical thinking skills Note taking helps students remember important material Good notes help students achieve success on assignments as well as prepare for tests outside of the classroom. Example:

What about homework and studying? Over 85% of our work will be given adequate time to complete in class. Projects or assignments will be done in class with few exceptions. Homework will be limited to studying for tests or quizzes, completing Cornell Notes, or perhaps prepping an answer to a discussion question for class. For that last part, be sure to mention that parents WILL be contacted if work is not getting done in a timely manner and plans to fix it will be made on a case by case basis. Students should not be working on papers at home. Ample time will be given in class. Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Google Classroom Your core teachers, with the exception of Mrs. Barber, will be using a web-based program called “Google Classroom.” You will be invited to join your teacher’s “Classrooms” and this will give you access to material resources, assignment requirements, rubrics, project parameters, assessments, and study tools. Student products such as papers and presentations may also be downloaded to classroom. This site is often easier to access from home than our websites so I will be posting most things here. All students will be trained on this during our Chromebook training so if you have never used this before then do not worry!

A look at Classroom https://classroom.google.com/u/0/c/Njk1NzI1Nzc0M1pa

Just Breathe It is not that you don’t know it… Growth Mindset It is just that you don’t know it “yet”! Just Breathe