7th grade social studies 2011-12

Hello All,

My teachers page is up thanks to Mary Heller Osgood. Straightforward and nothing fancy but hopefully informative.

10-4-11

Thanks for subjecting yourself to the first page of the U.S. Citizenship Test. Your children were excited about administering it and I am happy to say they reported back that most of you did very well. I used this with them as a pretest of sorts and they took the test in small teams in a gameshow format. They were allowed to use their books as a resource and three teams answered 16 of the 19 questions correctly and one team was able to answer 13 of the 19. Believe it or not the test has 100 questions, so be prepared to see more questions in the future.

Today students worked in small groups discussing the 5 Supreme Court cases the students were assigned for homework in the Upfront magazine. Each group reread/reviewed the case and decided if they agreed with the courts decision and the impact the decision may or may not have had on them now or in the future.

As a class we will not get to read each article in every issue as I am picking the ones relevant to our studies, so I urge you to read and discuss some of these timely stories with your son or daughter.

Next class we will finish discussing the other Supreme Court decisions we did not get to today and then start lesson number three in our text book We The People. This lesson will focus on "What is constitutional government?". We will also review and share the homework assignments.

HOMEWORK FOR FRIDAY

This assignment is to " Pick one of the 10 Supreme Court decisions we have read about, in both the first and current Upfront Magazine, that is of the most interest to you. Reread the summary of the decision and then delve deeper by researching the details of the case using any research tool at your disposal. (please site your source). Then write in one,  two paragraphs or more any interesting details you may have uncovered, then write how this decision has or will effect you now or in the future. Sometimes reading the "dissenting opinions" of the supreme court judges who did not agree with the majority vote opinions can yield some interesting side notes.

Good Luck,

See you Friday!