Permission slips? We brainstormed a class list of "Who are we, America?" -- each student has on their own paper and I have one on the SMART Board, as well; we'll revisit this list repeatedly throughout the year to add and edit as the students see fit. To pick up where we left off, I went through the 3-slide slide-show to revisit the themes of humanity we discerned last year in World History. To practice our Claim & Evidence skill, students worked collaboratively to identify James Loewen's thesis in the introductory paragraph I provided them; we discussed/edited our answers and reviewed the C&E Rubric found in Google Classroom. (BTW, James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me" will be used periodically in this class; if you are interested in reading the entire book, I have a full class set of them and you are most welcome to borrow one to take home.) We then began an individual, scored Reading Claim & Evidence on sizeable excerpts from Loewen's Chapter 2 as a way to jump right into our first unit -- "Exploration & Colonization." C&E Tricks (instruction) pages were provided. We will finish this assessment in class on Monday.
