Sunday, September 30, 2012

Friday, September 28, 2012

September 28th, 2012

Today we were back into the same routine of daily history class type activities after our Quest that we had yesterday. The Quest wasn't as bad as i thought it was going to be, as the first text or quiz of a new teacher is always a learning curve. Back to buisness. The first thing that we did today was go over a worksheet on the New England colonies, Middle colonies, and the Southern colonies. This was homework the night before so we just had to correct the answers. Last night we also signed up for a voki.com account. We then wrote a little monologue about a person who lived in one of these colonies. We had to make it what the average colonist would be for that area. In my group we had Mr.John Jacobs who came from England and lived in the Southern colonies. He owned his own indigo and rice plantation and hoped to expand it to include tobacco. A few other things that we included was that he went to the Anglican chuch and he owned many slaves. We used this voki.com account to create our person and bring him to life. I liked how we got to connect to the colonists on a personal level and bring them to life, rather than just memorising facts about them.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Freedoms Ed-cafe

Today in history we did a class exercise called an ed-cafe. Thats when you are grouped together and assigned a topic, then in groups of other topics you lead an 8 minute conversation about your topic. You rotate your groups after every time so you are talking with other students in the class. This was the first time I ever did an ed-cafe and going into it I was a little unsure of what it would be like. After the fist conversation I really started to get into it and really enjoy talking about these freedoms that we have in the United States. I think that this was a really fun class and would definitely do it again! A couple things that I think could've been better was that the discussions got more involved, there were a lot of pauses inbetween all the points that were made but I think part of it was that we have never done this before. I think that the conversations that went really well were the ones in which the leader had prepared questions for the group before the point to get you really thinking about it before discussing it. Also I think that if people more of jumped in on the conversation instead of one person talking, then the next, and back and forth between two people, it would end up to be a better conversation. Or the leader get the people who didn't say anything to give some input because they might have a terrific idea but be too shy to actually put it out there. Overall I thought that this ed-cafe went really well and I'm looking forward to the next one!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Monday, September 24, 2012

September 24th 2012

Again we find ourselves in the room of Mr.Boyle learning about United States history. Today we learned all about the Bill of Rights. To get a real understanding of these rights in a real-life, not really realistic scenerio created by Mr.Boyle himself. So, in a nutshell, the scenerio is about these party-goers that are having a blast at a Madonna concert on Mr. Roger Will's property on Sunday, which the Blue Laws prohibit. All of the characters get brought in, the party-goers got a bench trial and were sentenced with a day in the stocks, Roger Will got a trial jury and had to wait a few years for him to be sentenced to banishment and his farm sold off, and last but definitely not least, Madonna, who got a trial which ended up with her being hung. It was very saddening to hear that Madonna was killed in such a vicious way, but she had a nice career behind her. After we read this little scenerio we got to find the ammendments that the characters would have for appealing their convictions. A few of the most common ammendments that came up were the First Ammendment in which there is no law establishing a national religion, or the right of the people to peacefully assemble and the Sixth Ammendment which is that the people have a right to a speedy and public trial and have the assistance of a lawyer. Just to be clear what I have just stated aren't the ammendments in full, but the important pieces that go along with the scenerio. I found that learning the ammendments by having a fake scenerio really made me pay attention and enjoy learning them as opposed to  memorizing them off a sheet of paper. All in all today's class was surpisingly fun!

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

September 19th 2012

Yesterday in history we learned about the different branches of our govenment. We got some worksheets that taught us what jobs the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches have. ALso in these fabulously informational worksheets we learned how each of the branches keep the others in check, like if a bill gets a presidential veto, Congress can overpower it with a 2/3 vote in each house or the Courts can declare laws made in Congress unconstitutional. In the middle of this we had a lunch break, but soon enough we were back in class making little infographics. We had to make an infographic on the three branches, which you can see in my blog I posted yesterday. It was fun having to figure out ways to represent the jobs of the branches in little pictures as well as little facts blurbs. Today we ended with another crafty history assignment, but before I can get to that I will have to explain what we did in class a little bit. When we walked into class today, the first thing that happened was that we were handed two pieces of paper, in my case I got a sheet with information about federalists on it. Keirsten, Allie, and I then filled out a question sheet of the arguments for the approval of the Constitution. We then got paired up with a person of the opposite arguments, in my case an anti-federalist. We then swapped answers on our sheets to learn about the opposite sides ideas and arguments. Mr. Boyle then gave us a big sheet of paper to create a magazine cover for the side he gave us. The magazine cover we made was for anti-federalists and had 'articles' such as "Secret Drafting- What's really in the Constitution?" and "No Bill of Rights- No Freedoms." The past couple days in history have been fun, especially with all the little crafty things that we did.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Infograph

Here's the inforgraph that Kiersten, Allie, Jolene, and I made during class today...

Sorry for the inconvenience of the infograph being sideway. :)

Monday, September 17, 2012

The Civic Values of My Friends

Here's my podcast of the civic values of my two friends, Mary and Rachel.



Voila! I hope you liked it!

September 17th 2012

Today in class we learned a lot about presidency and how the election works. It was interesting how there were actually three different plans that were on what the country needed for an exectutive. Earlier in the week, or rather last week since today is Monday, Mr. Boyle posted a question on if there should be one president or two and interestingly enough having more that one president was included in one of the plans. One thing that I found strange was that in the Hamilton Plan, the term length for the president could last for years and years if they were well behaved, like not breaking the law, etc. After I spent a few minutes pondering over this odd declaration, Mr. Boyle explained that Mr. Hamilton liked the idea of having a king which influenced his ideas. He also told us we'd be learning a little more on Mr. Hamilton later. I learned a lot about voting and the presidential election today too, like how the president can't win with only the electoral votes from the big states. When you just think about it you would think thay add up, but no, the numbers just don't add up quite right. We also found out some other little tidbits of information like Californina is usually democratic and Texas is usually republican, and Maine can go wither way. I am chock-full of little blurbs of information that I can pester my parents with when they go to vote. Voting and presidency is actually a really neat thing and I found class today to be really interesting.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

September 13th, 2012

For the past couple days in American History we have been leaning a lot about the Constitutional Convention. We have been focusing on the topic of representation and what all the ideas based around representation were. On the 12th, or yesterday, we were divided into groups to focus on one of the 3 questions of representation. My question was the question of election by the people or election by state legislatres. What surprised me was how many of the people opposed the election by the people. Roger Sherman, Elbride Gerry, Charles Pinkney, and Oliver Ellsworth all opposed election by the people. I would've thought that most of the men involved would be for election by the people as they were already governed by one force and didn't have a say. Most of their opposition came from their ideas that people are easily influenced to vote one way or another, which I really understand. The other three men all supported the election by the people, mainly for the reasons as that was what democracy was and that a government couldn't really be strong without the support and confidence of the people which they would get by letting the people vote. The next day, or today rather, our groups got split up and we had to explain our question of representation to people who had different questions of representation. The other two questions that we learned about were if there should be one branch of government or two branches and if there should be proportional or equal representation in congress. I found the question of proportional or equal representation to be really interesting. I think that it would be more fair to have more representatives for the larger states but then the smaller states would be easily out voted by the larger states. I found it really interesting how all these ideas were piled together to create the House of Representatives and the Senate and how all the ideas of representation are divided up to be a well organized branch of government.

Monday, September 10, 2012

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Three Artifacts Describing Me

If someone were to come and look back on my life, I would have to say that one of the artifacts that they would find that describes me would be my vast clothing and jewelry collection. I spend hours watching fashion television shows and reading the fashion section in The Daily News. Shopping is one of my favorite activities, I love to just go to the mall with my friends and buy new clothes that I end up finding along with some matching jewelry. My closet if ever expanding and I doubt that it will ever stop growing. Occasionally, on a whim, I will attempt to make my own clothes. I have never really succeded in making something very wearable, but I came close! I'm always inspred to try new looks and clothing styles mainly through the television show Project Runway. One of my favorite designers, Mondo Guerra, who always designed in bright colors and crazy prints set me on a summer look including checkerboard pants and neon t-shirts. I absolutely love fashion and anything related to it, which is why my clothes are a really important item to describe me.

Another item someone would come across if they were to look back on my life would be some Cadbury chocolate wrappers. I absolutely love chocolate! Cadbury chocolate, in my opinion, is the absolute best chocolate in the world. I spend a lot of my time snacking and munching on sweets, mostly chocolate. I also love to bake, anything from cupcakes to pies! Most of the things that I end up making have some form of chocolate in it, big surprise there! My favorite thing to make are coffee chocolate cupcakes, which everybody who has tried them has fallen in love with. I'm pretty sure that I get my chocolate loving side from my grandmother who is always on the lookout for the sweet treat.

I would have to say that the most important artifact relating to my life would be my horse Stanley. He is basically my whole life. He was my 13th birthday present, which I have to say is pretty awesome. I spend every single day with him at the barn, riding him, grooming him, and overall just really taking care of him. I started riding horses when I was 5 years old, and have been hooked on horses ever since. There is never a time where you could find me without something related to horses. I feel that horse back riding has really taught me to be a more responsable person, because everytime you ride a horse you have to brush it off and clean it before and after you ride as well as maintain the equipment that you use. Riding has also brought me life-long friends that I wouldn't have met otherwise. My friend Mary and I always get together and go riding our horses on little trail rides around the property when we get ther chance, which is really fun. Horse back riding is and always be the center of my life, which is why Stanley would be the most important artifact.