Spring Disrtict Assessment

We had to take a break from the Era of Expansion unit for our Spring District Assessment on Tuesday March 5th.  Each semester FBISD has an assessment to make sure we retaining all the information we are studying.  The units assessed on the Spring District Assessment are Constitution & Government, Early Republic, and Era of Expansion.

For the Fall District Asssessment we had a competition between Mr. Ide's and Ms. Howell's classes.  We compared the scores from each period to see who won. Here's the breakdown: Period 1 winners were Ide, Period 2 winners were Howell, Period 3 winners were Howell, Period 4 winners were Ide, Perdiod 5 winners were Ide, Period 7 winners were Howell.  It came out as a tie! 3-3! For the Spring District Assessment we decided to not compete against each other but try out best to represent our school and see how many others schools we can score higher than!  Keep your fingers crossed :)

Technology, Technology, Technology!

Every year in May the 8th grade students take a technology test called the Technology Literary Assessment (TLA).  We know how to text, take pictures/videos with our phones, blog and use apps on the iPad but there is a lot more to technology that we are not as familiar with such as Spreadsheets, Databases, Word Processing, etc.  Since we have to take this test in May we asked Ms. Powell, an Educational Technology Specialist for FBISD, to help us further our technology education.  She visits our school two days every month and introduces us to new topics.  This month it happened to be Wednesday and Thursday of this week and we focused on Databases and Word Processing.  While we were working on Word Processing we also were able to continue studying Westward Expansion. We watched a few short videos about the Mexican American War, used this website below as a database, and created a chart  about the significant people and events in Microsoft Word. 

Mexican American War Database

This is the website where you can find the directions how to complete the Mexican-American War Chart.  We also use this website to watch videos and complete interactive modules to prepare for the TLA. 


www.learning.com

This is how we log in:
Username: our lunch number
Password:123456
District: Fort Bend ISD

Understanding Manifest Destiny

We started this week talking about the idea of Manifest Destiny. We learned that Manifest means clear and obvious, Destiny means something that is sure to happen. The idea of Manifest Destiny is that the American settlers believed they were destined to expand across the continent, from sea to shining sea (just like the song "America the Beautiful"). The American settles may have started out with 13 small states but it was only a matter of time before they gained more territory with under the Northwest Ordinance, with the purchase of the Louisiana Purchase, the annexation of Texas, eventually reaching California. 

 In class we talked about how this was a bold move. The American settlers were so determined they didn't let anyone, not the Native Americans or the Mexicans stand in their way, which caused conflicts between groups of people. We have mixed feelings about the idea of Manifest Destiny because the American settlers disregarded the fact that other people were there first. On the other hand we are grateful to have the all of the land we have today, we think of the explorers as brave pioneers, and how exciting it is to think about how the United States grew. 

 We then turned our feelings about Manifest Destiny into a poem. We used precise words to convey imagery, and illustrations to show our understanding of the concept of Manifest Destiny. We know our ELA teachers would be proud :) 

Below is an example from Ms. Howell, we will share some student examples when we turn them in!

Westward Expansion

This week we started our unit on Westward Expansion.  Over the next few weeks we will be studying the Industrial Revolution, Manifest Destiny, the role of immigrants and women, as well as how the Mexican & American War contributed to Westward Expansion.

We started the unit on Tuesday with a pre-assessment to see how much we already knew about Westward Expansion.  Then we watched a video about the Industrial Revolution which highlighted inventions such as the cotton gin, the spinning jenny, and the development of textile mills and factories. 

Industrial Revolution Video

On Wednesday we created our own communities.  At first our communities were neat and clean, each house had plenty of land surrounding it.  As time went on, and the factory system developed, we were forced to add more houses, more roads and eventually more factories.  Our neat communities became crowded, overpopulated and because of the factories, polluted.  This was a great demonstration of urbanization.

Here is a student example:

Look how close together the houses are!


Thursday and Friday we continued to study the Industrial Revolution, specifically the innovations that made it a Revolution, such as Interchangeable Parts, the Bessemer Steel Process, the Locomotive, Turnpikes and Steamships.  We completed a chart describing each innovation, how it contributed to the development of the United States and the region that it mostly benefited. In order to complete the chart we used our textbooks as well as ShowMe.  ShowMe is an ipad app that allows the teacher to create short lessons for the students to watch and listen to, each innovation had it's own ShowMe. 

The ShowMe's can be found on the CMMS SS Department Blog below.
CMMS SS Department Blog

Here is a copy of the Significant Innovations Chart:
Significant Innovations Chart


We will continue to study Westward Expansion next week with the idea of Manifest Destiny.

Have a good weekend!