Finals Day - Class Recap

Go forth into the next school year, wonderful students. Picture taken in New Zealand, February 2014.

Dear class,

Today was our last class together! I am so glad that I do not have to say goodbye for too long, since I will be at Westview next year to see you in the halls and say hello, if you aren't in one of my classes. I had so much fun teaching you all, and I hope that you learned a lot about American History, as well!

Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Thankful" by Kelly Clarkson. Just like "Changes" by 2Pac at the start of my time with you, I always use this song as the soundtrack at the end of teaching classes. The lyrics read (in part):

I'm thankful

for the blessings

and the lessons that I've learned with you

by my side

I'm thankful, so thankful, for the love

that you keep bringing in my life

in my life

I truly am so grateful to get to teach such wonderful young people. Thank you for all of your efforts this semester!

AGENDA 6/11/14:
News Brief
Final Test
Study Time

Homework: Have a wonderful summer! See you next year!

News Brief: Ashton brought in the last news brief of the semester: ABCNews.go.com - Sea Star Disease Growing on Oregon Coast. Interesting news!

We talked about another tragic shooting, this time close to home: KGW.com - Police: Shooter at Reynolds High School is dead. I hope that the news brief throughout the semester inspired everyone to follow what is currently going on in the United States and the world! It is so important to remain engaged as a citizen. Thank you, everyone, for participating in this!

Final Test: As promised, 50 multiple choice questions and a short essay response about your reflections on how class went this year. I will grade these and have the final grades for the semester posted as soon as I can.

Study Time: The rest of time in class was for study, since I know everyone has plenty of other finals to study for. Thank you for your focus here, while some students were finishing up their tests!

Modern America, Day 3 - Class Recap

Today, we played a game of Jeopardy in class. This weekend is the championships of another kind of game: the French Open. This is a picture I took in Paris at the French Open last year, when Rafael Nadal won.

Dear class,

Welcome to your last weekend of the 2013-14 school year at Westview! I had a lot of fun playing Jeopardy review with everyone! Here's the class recap for today:

Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark" by Fall Out Boy. Selected because it is pump up song for playing Jeopardy and because of nuclear fallout. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 6/6/14:
News Brief
D-Day
Jeopardy Review
Study Time

Homework: Review notes and PowerPoints for in class final on Wednesday. Read the blog! Last news brief: Ashton.

News Brief: Allison chose this story to talk about: CNN.com - Who is the student who pounced on the Seattle gunman? A hero, many say. This seems like it will continue to be a problem if nothing is done. It certainly will not just stop if we keep the present course.

D-Day: Since today is the 70th anniversary of the "D-Day" landings of Allied forces in Normandy, France, I wanted to talk a little bit about the importance of the day. Here are links to what we checked out in class (interrupted a bit by the fire drill):

History.com - D-Day by the Numbers Infographic

History.com - D-Day Video

ThisIsColossal.com - 9,000 Fallen Soldiers Etched into the Sand on Normandy Beach

Jeopardy Review: This is definitely my favorite way to prepare for an upcoming test. Again, the first four categories contain questions that will actually be on the semester final. The final will be 50 multiple choice questions along with one short essay prompt (that you will not be able to prepare for). Here is the PowerPoint again to review, if you want:

Google Drive - American Studies 10 Semester 2 Final Review Jeopardy PowerPoint

There are obviously questions on the final that are not on the review, and the review does not have the answers. If you want to study so that you know the information, most of the material (some of it will be from the day on 9/11 we did - see below for that) for the final will come from the following PowerPoints:

Google Drive - Cold War and McCarthyism PowerPoint

Google Drive - The Korean War PowerPoint

Google Drive - The Space Race and Cuban Missile Crisis PowerPoint

Google Drive - The Vietnam War PowerPoint

Google Drive - The Watergate Scandal PowerPoint

Google Drive - Afghanistan and The War on Terror

Phew! There you have it! Lots to review for next week. Our last class together is next Wednesday, from 7:45-9:15 for your final. Let me know if you have any questions I can answer!

Study Time: The rest of time in class (there was not a lot, due to the short schedule) was given as study time. 

See you next week!

Modern America, Day 2 - Class Recap

This is part of N591UA, which operate United Flight 93 on September 11th, 2001, and was hijacked for possible use against the White House. Instead, a passenger revolt forced down the plane into a field in Pennsylvania. A part of my 9/11 story is that I once flew on that exact same plane, from Portland to Chicago in 1996. Check out my FlightMemory map of lifetime flights.

Hello wonderful students,

Today, I tried to do as much as I could with explaining the current "War on Terror" that United States has been involved with. It was the last real day of new content - next class will be a study day, combined with playing Jeopardy to review some of the main points of the semester. Here's the class recap for today:

Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Wake Me Up When September Ends" by Green Day. Selected because we discussed the events of September 11th, 2001 today in class. Lyrics (which some may argue directly relate to the War on Terror) here.

AGENDA 6/4/14:
News Brief
Fall of the Wall
9/11
Afghanistan/The F Word

Homework: Review notes for upcoming in class final. Read the blog! Next news brief: Allison.

News Brief: Sarah chose this story to talk about for his news brief: CNN.com - 12-year-old Wisconsin girl stabbed 19 times; friends arrested. Apparently this was done to impress a fictional character? Wow. Please be good to yourself and each other, everyone.

I also showed this video to the class, which was about the release of a American solider from the Taliban in Afghanistan (this is a very big news story right now): Independent.co.uk - Handshakes and dust: Taliban release video of US PoW Bowe Bergdahl's first taste of freedom.

Fall of the Wall: This was left over from last class. I wanted to explain how the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the Iron Curtain and Communism in Europe, and how the United States helped bring it down. Specifically, we noted that President Ronald Reagan asked the USSR to "tear down this wall!" Here's the video we watched in class:

History.com - Deconstructing History: Berlin Wall

At the same time as the wall was being torn down, the Soviet Union was collapsing - late 1989 into 1990. Those factors also contributed to the First Gulf War, with Iraq, which we talked about later on.

9/11: To start this section, I asked students to do a free write for about 5 minutes on the following questions:

What do you know about September 11th, 2001? What have you heard about it? Do you remember anything? What have you learned before, in class, or from parents?

After the free write time, we shared responses as a class and I told my story about September 11th. I was starting my Sophomore year at Wilson High School in Portland. It was definitely a day I will remember for the rest of my life. To drive home the point as to what the day was like, I showed this video in class, which was a timeline of the day:

From there, I moved on to discussing how September 11th, 2001 came about.

Afghanistan/The F Word: Some of this material was from my Global Studies class I taught last year a long term sub, so I apologize if this was the second time around for a few students in class. I thought it was important to look at the conflict from a United States perspective. Here's the PowerPoint presentation I went through:

Google Drive: Understanding Afghanistan PowerPoint

I wanted students to take general notes about what led to September 11th and how the First Gulf War between the United States and Iraq helped influence it. We are still currently involved in a war in Afghanistan - it is now America's longest war. Over 2,200 American soldiers have died as a part of it.

The "F" word that we talked about in class was FEAR. To start to look at how fear played a role after September 11th, I showed a couple of videos:

This is United States Secretary of State Colin Powell addressing the United Nations about the "weapons of mass destruction" that the U.S. government thought was in Iraq. It turned out that there were not any such weapons.

This video contains a montage of President George W. Bush and many of the key figures in his government repeating words in speeches that sounded pretty scary.

The last bit to class was another free write. This time, it was about fear in our lives. 

The prompt was: write about a time in which you experienced fear and how you felt. 

After writing and sharing in partners, I asked for volunteers to share with the class. It is nice to be able to look back on scary moments in life and laugh, or just be thankful that we escaped out of it. It was also good to hear about how fear makes us feel - anxious, wanting to do anything to escape, and not wanting to experience it again.

I wanted to make the connection between the fear much of America felt after 9/11. In fact, one of the ways that the government might have helped keep people fearful (or ready) is by making a threat level color coded system.:

In the entire history of the threat level system (which ended under President Obama), the threat level never went below Elevated - meaning we were supposed to be at "significant risk of terrorist attacks," constantly. I ended class by asking that you think about what that might do to people who could be afraid of another terrorist attack.

Whew. With that, the rest of the semester will be review. I tried to pack as much as I could in! Let me know if I can answer any more questions - I really appreciated them all today in class! See you next time!

Modern America, Day 1 - Class Recap

The outside of the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. I mean, I'm a history teacher - I couldn't resist going to look at the building myself when I first visited the city in 2010!

Dear class,

Second to last week of the year! Today was another one day deep dive into a topic in the last century of American history - Watergate! What a super interesting piece of our history, at least to me! Here's the class recap:

Learning Targets:
SS.HS.KN.ALT.17: I can explain the process of change and continuity in a society, place or region.
SS.HS.KN.ALT.23: I can describe the influences, impacts and resolutions of historical conflicts.

Soundtrack: “Waterfalls" by TLC. Selected because today we learned all about the Watergate scandal in class. Lyrics here.

AGENDA 6/2/14:
News Brief
Watergate PowerPoint
The Final Report
Fall of the Wall

Homework: Read the blog! Next news brief: Sarah H.

News Brief: Hailey had the news brief today and selected this story to talk about: NBCNews.com - Jack Kevorkian's Aide Pushed Carbon Monoxide for Executions. This relates to some of what we were talking about in earlier news briefs, in that states with the death penalty are finding it difficult to execute people.

Watergate PowerPoint: To start talking about Watergate, I asked the class about what a "scandal" was and gave some examples of scandals. Many scandals have names that end in -gate, due to this scandal! Next, I went through a PowerPoint. I tried to go fast on this, because there are a bunch of slides and I really just want students to get the main points of what happened for the upcoming multiple choice final. Here is the presentation again if you missed class or wanted to read through it at your own pace:

Google Drive - The Watergate Scandal PowerPoint

Some of the main points not covered by the documentary we watched were about President Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigning due to unrelated corruption charges. This also went more into depth about how President Gerald Ford got to be President without ever being elected to the Executive Branch, and the pardon he gave President Nixon.

The Final Report: After the PowerPoint, I showed a National Geographic documentary on what happening in the Watergate scandal. These were the questions to answer in class:

Google Drive - Watergate: The Final Report Video Questions

Here is the video we watched in class:

Again, I find the entire story so interesting! This was a President of the United States, who had to resign, because he was connected to all of these crimes! I hope everyone understood the importance of this, especially in connection to what we were learning about the Cold War and the Vietnam War as a part of it. The result was really deep dissatisfaction and distrust about the U.S. government.

Fall of the Wall: We did not get to this in class. Next time! Quite a lot to pack in: I want to talk about the fall of the Berlin Wall, along with our modern "War on Terror," too. Looking forward to these last few days of teaching you! Have a great weekend and come back ready for one last full week of the school year!