What's Going on In Class
Tenth Grade: We are currently reading Animal Farm and students are working in groups on a campaign where they represent a certain type of government. The test date for this book is 11/16.
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Ninth Grade: We are currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Students will be creating fake social media websites for their assigned characters. The test date for this unit it 12/ 5
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A big area of focus in our room is finding our passion for reading. Here I will update what I'm currently reading. Students are required to read twelve books this year. (The should strive to read twenty-five.) To receive credit for the book, they will have to give a book talk, once every three weeks. They will also have a weekly journal where they answer a question about their reading book and identify two new vocabulary words from their book.
Dreamland Burning by Jennifer Latham
Some bodies won't stay buried.Some stories need to be told. When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family's property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the past... and the present. Nearly one hundred years earlier, a misguided violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what's right the night Tulsa burns. Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, Jennifer Latham's lightning-paced page-turner brings the Tulsa race riot of 1921 to blazing life and raises important questions about the complex state of US race relations - both yesterday and today.
Did you know that many of America’s Founding Fathers—who fought for liberty and justice for all—were slave owners?
Through the powerful stories of five enslaved people who were “owned” by four of our greatest presidents, this book helps set the record straight about the role slavery played in the founding of America. From Billy Lee, valet to George Washington, to Alfred Jackson, faithful servant of Andrew Jackson, these dramatic narratives explore our country’s great tragedy—that a nation “conceived in liberty” was also born in shackles.
These stories help us know the real people who were essential to the birth of this nation but traditionally have been left out of the history books. Their stories are true—and they should be heard.
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and FIVE BLACK LIVES by Kenneth C. Davis
No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won't say who fired the shot that killed their friend, Grant; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them. Kate Marino's senior year internship at the District Attorney's Office isn't exactly glamorous-more like an excuse to leave school early that looks good on college applications. Then the DA hands her boss, Mr. Stone, the biggest case her small town of Belle Terre has ever seen. The River Point Boys are all anyone can talk about. Despite their damning toxicology reports the morning of the accident, the DA wants the boys' case swept under the rug. He owes his political office to their powerful families.Kate won't let that happen. Digging up secrets without revealing her own is a dangerous line to walk; Kate has personal reasons for seeking justice for Grant. As she investigates with Stone-the aging prosecutor relying on Kate to see and hear what he cannot-she realizes that nothing about the case-or the boys-is what it seems. Grant wasn't who she thought he was, and neither is Stone's prime suspect. As Kate gets dangerously close to the truth, it becomes clear that the early morning accident might not have been an accident at all-and if Kate doesn't uncover the true killer, more than one life could be on the line including her own.
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