After some technical difficulties, the blog is once again operational. Today and tomorrow, 10th grade classes are constructing web pages discussing the War of 1812 while 9th graders are completing their first PowerPoints on the same subject. 10th graders will have today and tomorrow to work on their websites with their presentations coming next week while the PowerPoints will be due tomorrow. Also, all classes were given grade reports detailing what grade they received for term 1 and how they received it.

debate survey

This week, we wrapped up the interdisciplinary project, which was a campaign poster with description. For sophomores, the project was included in a PowerPoint. Additionally, we finished the American Revolution with five major battles highlighted. We finished the week by taking notes on the construction of the nation.

Today we began work on our interdisciplinary project. Freshmen will create a political advertising poster supporting their candidate as well as writing a paragraph explaining why their poster will help get their candidate elected. Sophomores and Juniors will complete the poster using Photoshop and then place it into a PowerPoint presentation. We visited the following sites to see examples of ads:

George Wallace

Obama

Commercials

Rough draft is due tomorrow, final draft friday.

Today we watched a movie in class discussing slavery in the colonies. This will lead into our discussion regarding the Declaration of Independence.

Today we learned about the Intolerable Acts. Each group was assigned a topic, such as the Stamp Act, Quartering Act, and Massachusetts Government Act, and were asked to complete a poster protesting their assigned topic. Notes can be obtained from any student in class.

Today was a short class that was spent revising our letters to the editor. All drafts must be submitted NO LATER THAN FRIDAY!

Facing History class was canceled today as the seniors and juniors were required to attend an assembly.

USHI classes will review exactly what an editorial looks like. In order to do this, we will look at an article found here. We will then examine the current electoral college map and discuss which issues are most important to each swing state. Finally, students will select a topic and battleground state and begin writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper in their state in support of their chosen candidate. By the end of class, each student should have a minimum of 1 paragraph finished and homework will be a completed rough draft.

Welcome to Mr. Malanga’s blog! Here you will find what we are doing each day in class so you can stay current even while you are out. For basic class information, such as the syllabus, please find your class link to the right of the page. Feel free to contact me with any questions at bmalanga@techboston.org.