The Train Keeps A-Movin All Night Long

In the last 8 schools days, I have seen the kids 3 days. Last week we had off Monday and Tuesday for inauguration. I went down for the parade. We got into the stands somehow, but it was so freaking cold. Afterward, I was glad I went, but during it, I was not a happy camper. The energy was really good though.








On Wednesday, I taught my first lesson. I still had Mrs. Z, the sub, in the room with me. We were talking about the origins of the Civil war....concentrating on the incidents that dealt with slavery...so this included the various compromises, the Dred Scott Decision, Bleeding Kansas, and John Brown. I did a brief powerpoint of these topics. One main concept I wanted to get across to my students was that of history NOT being composed of solid facts that one must memorize (regardless of what the SOL's say). I tried to introduce this concept by showing the following pictures of John Brown.








I asked the students to describe to be what they noticed in each paragraph. They came up with some pretty good stuff. I told them both pictures were John Brown and this represented the different ways John Brown is remembered by history and that this general theme will present itself throughout the semester.


Next, I gave half the room the transcript of Lincoln's speech at the Ottawa debate and half the room Douglas's speech at the debate. Each speech discusses the candidates view of the various topics discussed earlier. The students were instructed to distribute the debate issues among themselves, a list I composed before hand and to summarize their candidate's stance in a paragraph and write their own opinion in a paragraph. The next class we would hold the debate.

Overall, I was very happy with how the lesson went. The students seemed to find in interesting, and most of the put good effort into it. The next day I gave the same lesson to the other half of the students (because we are on block scheduling) This was in from off Mrs. Lemon. She seemed to think it went pretty well, but she wasn't happy the activity was going into 2 days which is understandable and not my original plan. The first half of the debates were held on Friday. I was really happy with the outcome and I think the students appreciated doing an activity.

I haven't seen the students since then. Monday and Tuesday were teacher work days, and we had a snow day today.