Let's study art.

With everything due in History this week, I'm actually really surprised that I haven't started reciting the Declaration of Independence in my sleep and chanting that "the British are coming!"

Yesterday in History class, Mr. Boyle showed us a very informative video/slide show about art during the American Revolution. It introduced us to four artists who did paintings depicting scenes from the American Revolution, and showed us what they symbolized and how geometry and color were used. While I found it interesting, my only problem was how long it was. Some of the paintings though, were very interesting to look at or, in some cases, very famous. My favorite fact of the day: Thomas Jefferson bribed a painter to paint his foot over the one of John Adams? Who thinks of this stuff?

When we came into History class today, we had to be prepared to write down the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. He gave us a few minutes to cram (and question our very existance) before we copied it down onto a half sheet of paper. The latter half of the class we finished going over the very end of the Revolution in time for our test tomorrow.

Which of course I am so looking forward to.

Let's post about timelines some more.

Lo and behold, here is my timeline. Before midnight.

Let's finish up our civic values.

Yup, that's what I'm doing. Please enjoy this informative VoiceThread on how Gabrielle Douglas shows honor, and Barack Obama shows justice.

Let's get ruthless.

Before I enlighten you about the events of today's bloodbath history class, it looks like I'm going to have to summarize the day before.

We walked in to class that day ready to whine and complain about our "Crisis" reading that had rendered us stumped the day before. Before we jumped into what we had planned, he went over the main ideas of the article and asked us once again; "are these really the times that try men's souls?" Most of us who had said 'yes' originally were reconsidering.

The rest of class we spent going over some of the important battles of the Revolution. We took notes on the Battle of New York and Trenton, watching the same online demonstrations that we used for Lexington and Concord. Am I really forced to reiterate how I feel about them?

Today, we went up the scale from normal to, uh, well, see the title. We had a scavenger hunt across the whole school, and we were split up into groups with the people who had devices. You would have thought we were in the QR-code scanning Olympics.

Once we got all the questions - which related to the battles, of course - we had to answer which battle it was, along with the date. First to turn it in with all the answers right got extra points.

The only thing that would have made us do it faster was if we got candy.

Let's contemplate "The Crisis."

For once - gasp - I don't have a compelling and interesting blog post, since History class the last two days has been ... well, not so compelling and not so interesting.

Due to the PSATs yesterday, class was cut short, leaving us with only enough time to share our findings from the previous class. We were split in half in order to share our summaries of each section of the Declaration of Independence. Eventually, however, it morphed into a giant game of 'Which Side Can Shout the Declaration of Independence Louder?' But we got the notes and a basic understanding of what the colonists were looking for while the wrote their Declaration, so I guess it's just a win-win.

Today, we were sadly Mr. Boyle-less. Even sadder was the fact that we were left with "The Crisis" to read, Thomas Paine's ideas on the Revolution. While it was informative, it was daunting, and on top of it we had to write an essay comparing his first line - "these are the times that try men's souls" - to our country and our problems today.

That, in a nutshell, was History class. Enjoy my lovely blog post.

Let's introduce our new best friends.

I'm loosing my mind. Very, very slowly. It's becoming harder for me to remember what I did a day ago, and let's not even talk about what I did last week. Everything has just become a big ball of info-y ... mush.

After thinking hard for a while, I finally remembered what yesterday's class revolved around - our people. Due yesterday was our flimsy Revolutionary War heroes. How could I forget that? I spent probably too much time slaving over Paul Revere, just for him to turn out less than four feet tall. How dissapointing.

We spent yesterday "introducing" everyone's paper person, aka holding them up the metal hanger on the back and rattling off some facts we looked up about them. Once we went over how they were important to the Revolution, we showed what we had placed in their pocket - for example, mine was dental equipment. 1700s dental equipment, to be more specific.

Today we moved on to the Declaration of Independence, first using the vocabulary we researched to pair up with someone with our definition. These eventually turned into groups of three, so everyone would have a device to read their designated part of the Declaration of Independence. Later, we would also use this device to create yet another fake tweet, summarizing our part of the Declaration in just 140 characters. Including spaces. Yikes.

By the end of this year, I betcha I'm going to be a project fiend. Make fake tweets? On it. Draw giant life size people? Gotcha. I just wonder if I'll be rendered incapable of taking notes ...

Let's meet Paul Revere.

Here is my VoiceThread on Paul Revere - enjoy!

Let's chant "location, location, location."

As the title implies, by the end of this, you shall be reciting that key phrase of real estate, as Mr. Boyle was so kind as to inform us. Apparently, they have a connection to Revolutionary War battle tactics. Who would have known.

Yesterday, once we were finished being confused about assignments and asking questions, we jumped right into a recap on Paul Revere's ride, and the events that followed. Yup, that's right, the battles at Lexington and Concord. We watched as a online model demonstrated the moves the British and the rebels made, from the British marching in to their retreat back to Boston. Now insert the phrase of the day ("location, location, location") as the rebels clearly had this. Always uphill of the British, it was pretty clear from the beginning that they were going to win. At least to me it was.

Watching this really helped me to get a visual of what was happening - there's a huge difference between reading something and seeing something. You could see that the militia had the advantage without anyone having to tell you.

Today we moved on to some of the key documents of this time period - the Olive Branch Petition, Common Sense, and Plain Truth. All had to do with whether or not the colonies should stick with Britain. Now we know that we didn't, but it's interesting to see both sides of the argument.

Let's time travel.

Yes, in this blog post we're going to travel back in time - all the way Friday, our last day of class before the long weekend. The desks were divided into pairs, facing each other. Maeve sat down opposite from me, and my best guess to what we were doing was a stare smackdown. Turns out, I was wrong. Go figure.

We went over the EdCafe we had done the day before, summarizing the events that we had covered, from the Stamp Acts to the First Continental Congress. Our main objective, however, was more like ... English class. We read Longfellow's not-so-accurate poem "Paul Revere's Ride." Not-so-accurate, you ask? There was actually three men who rode out to warn the people that the Regulars were coming.

Turned out our task was a sonnet that was my historically correct, easy until proven difficult. Not a lot of sensible things rhyme with "twelve."

Flash forward to today, when we did something completely different. Before reading through eye witness accounts of the "shot heard round the world" we watched a video on their reliability. Looks like we're left second-guessing whether or not the witnesses knew what they were talking about. Most people came up with one reason or another why their account couldn't be trusted.

Looks like that's it for now. However, due to the amount of stuff I have left to do, I would expect some minor mental breakdowns soon. Be warned.

Let's discuss the pre-revolution.

Yes, yes, another blog post dedicated to EdCafes. Yesterday, after dropping History the day before, we trekked on over to the library to research and create presentations on the events we had been assigned. Each group had to divvy up the work and create slides.

This was all well and good, since it gave us all a chance to look a little bit more into what we were going to be talking about tomorrow. Everybody got to do the work and such. The only thing that struck me odd overall was everyone's aversion to making the title page. Why? Do you have a tragic past with making title pages? I thought not.

Which brings me to the EdCafe itself, what we did in class today. Like the last one, we would move from discussion to discussion to learn about the different topics, these ones being the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts/the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Intolerable Acts, and finally the First Continental Congress. It was all very similar to the one we did before, except there was a lot more teaching and explaining compared to discussing, which I can understand. How could we discuss something we were just starting to understand? I still liked how many questions we could ask, and how we could share our input. Very nice. I'll golf clap to that.

When will our next EdCafe be? I have a feeling there'll be plenty more in the future.

Let's "confront the French!"

Now that we've finished talking about the Constitution, we've moved forward (or backwards?) to the American Revolution. Once the bell rang after the quest on Thursday, we jumped with both feet into our first homework assignment - questions based around a serious of maps of the colonies.

To start off class on Friday, we went over it and reviewed which colonies were in which group. This turned out to be important information, seeing as next we we were put into groups to make a "voki" for a person from each section. However, once we realized that Voki wasn't working on iPods or iPhones, most of us ended up drawing them. Their personalities came complete with jobs, religions, everything that represented the people with lived in New England, the Middle, and the South. 

Today, we went more in depth in the very beginning of animosity between England andthe colonies with the French and Indian War. We read a loud the sheet he gave us and talked about why our friend George Washington wanted to move west.

It was to get more land for tobacco farming, in case you were wondering.