Sixth Grade Presentation Project on Middle, New, and Kingdom of Kush

We've been learning about the Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt and the Kingdom of Kush in class. Recently we've started looking at how to make our Keynote presentations even better. Our current project is to combine both.

Students have been given a skeleton of a Keynote slideshow with ten slides. Students may not change the theme, but they may add text to slides, or change the order. Students must add ten slides of their own and prepare a presentation on the three Kingdoms that lasts between two and five minutes. They may discuss the pharoahs, the religious changes, similarities and differences, etc.

Students will be graded on the following

• is their presentation between two and five minutes?
• are there at least twenty slides in the presentation? (ten from the starter and ten added)
• is there only one point on each slide? (per our class discussion on good presentations—the only exception can be introductory and summary slides)
• is there only one image per slide?
• is the image pixelated or watermarked?
• is there a structure to the presentation?
• is the student giving a meaningful presentation? (per our class discussion)

The slideshow and presentation is due on next Thursday, February 27th.

YOUR Lincoln-Douglas Debate Newspaper Article

Continuing on from our last assignment, you now need to synthesize information from the recollections and the articles you read about the Galesburg debate between Lincoln and Douglas and create your own front-page newspaper article.

Remember the language and tone used in the articles and write it as if you yourself were there and were reporting on the event. It should be at least 350 words. Remember the positions of the candidates on the issue of slavery. They may come in handy in writing your article.

Those who add an appropriate drawing or illustration might get extra credit. This is due Tuesday.

Eighth Grade Work on Lincoln-Douglas Debates

In class we watched this short video introducing the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Then students chose small groups (no more than four) and opened a shared google document.

Students went to this page and used the linked resources there for the following.

Section One: using transcripts of the two news articles (Galesburg Democrat and Chicago Press and Tribune) linked:

• Compare and contrast the articles. How are they alike and how are they different from one another?
• Compare the articles to modern day news sources. How does the tone compare? Would modern news portray the debaters similarly?
• Finally, do you think debates like this are valuable? Why or why not?

Section Two: using the three recollections linked:

• How valuable should historians consider these recollection?
• When were they written?
• Should that matter to historians? Why or why not?

Eighth Grade Work - The Road to Civil War

In your composition book, you should have the answers to the following questions:

• When did the Mexican-American War end?
• What treaty ended the war? What did the USA gain?
• Who were the three major candidates in the Election of 1848? What were the electoral college and popular vote results?
• What issue did the third party (not the Whigs or the Democrats) run on?
• Who were the candidates in the Election of 1852? What were the electoral college and popular vote results?

Then you were to read Section One of Chapter Twelve and answer questions one, two, four, and five from the Section Review. I'll check for all tomorrow.

This Week's Current Events Assignment

Here are answers to the most common questions about this week's current events assignment.

When is it due?
You are presenting on Friday. Your written portion is also due in your assignment folder before class starts on Friday.

How long does the spoken part need to be?
To get a passing grade, it needs to be between one minute and two minutes long.

What does the topic need to be on?
This time, any appropriate topic from the past month!

Do we have to do a written summary again?
Yes.

Do we need to highlight terms?
Not this time. You're welcome.

What do we need to do?
You need to have a written summary of your article and the bibliographic citation. You also need to copy-paste the article after the summary and citation.

What format does the citation need to be in?

• Website article: Author's last name, first name. "Article Title." Name of online publication. (Date posted). Date accessed. <Complete URL>.

Can you give an example?

• Bernstein, Mark. "10 Tips on Writing the Living Web." A List Apart: For People Who Make Websites. (16 Aug. 2002). 4 May 2006 <http://alistapart.com/articles/writeliving>.

Mexican-American War Site in Temecula!

Here is a short wkpd article on The Temecula Massacre, part of the Mexican-American War.

And here is a longer article, and here an article from the Native perspective.

And here you can find the actual cemetery site (near Temecula Parkway and Apis Road)

Remember that if you go to the cemetery site and take pictures as evidence, I will give you extra credit. This offer expires on February 14th!