Greetings and Introduction to APUSH

All:


Welcome to my APUSH blog. Although I will attempt to update this weekly, feel free to email me anytime with questions, and of course as stated in my syllabus, you are also welcomed to stop by my office during my "office hours."


I felt that last week was a fairly good start to the semester. As I said on our very first day, APUSH is designed to be a rigorous course for the serious student who enjoys history. In addition, I believe that there will be other "exterior" challenges we have to confront and overcome. Such as our classroom which resembles a cave (and lately, a very hot one!). Another challenge is having class directly after lunch. Here's where we should take a lesson for our Latin American neighbors and all take a siesta! Instead, you go to APUSH class... too bad we don't live in a perfect world. There's a few of you who I do see looking as if you're ready for siesta-time. Please continue to fight it! 


In terms of the material we covered last week, our focus on was introducing the text. As mentioned, it is very important to read both the chapter introductions and conclusions (and always TAKE notes). Then go through all the "Significant Events," so at least you're familiarized with some of them (when you are finished the chapter, one assignment will be to briefly describe the specific significance of each event in one sentence, so you might as well get started).


The other important part of the text is to understand it will be your most important tool for the next two years for this class. As a text, it's excellent. I also like the pictures, maps and graphs (which means, so will you!).


Much of this chapter is a review of material you should have been exposed to in your world history class. However, we'll take this same information and teach it in a different context (Americana-centric?).


The week of 8/23-27 will hopefully see us near the end of the this chapter ("The Meeting of Cultures").


In class Monday we'll look use the data projector and look at this site, Homework Now, some other sites, if I can get everything to work correctly. Let me also demonstrate how to set  up the timeline in a word doc using "Tables." 


Hopefully, we'll have time to begin discussing section 2, "Europe Looks Westward" (which was the homework assigned Friday, due Monday (8/23); which is a very long section! If you complete this assignment by tomorrow, then you won't have homework on Tuesday night (unless you choose to stay ahead of the game and get started on section 3, "The Arrival of the English" as well as continue to work on your time line.


Wednesday's discussion will center on completing the information on the Spanish connection, and I will only briefly touch on the subsection, "Africa and America." That night's homework will be to begin section 3.


Thursday's discussion will again make you feel as if you're still world history with the focus characters such as More (which we've touched on, and this spelling is correct of his last name!), John Cabot, Richard Hakluyt (okay, you never discussed him last year), Martin Luther, John Calvin, Queen Elizabeth and many more. This section, like section 2, is a long one, as well as very important. I'm certain it will continue into Friday. However, this first chapter only contains three sections, whereas most of the other chapters will contain four, five and sometimes six chapters. 


No chapter test will be given here at the end. Perhaps a short paper over the weekend, so I may get a sense of your writing style. As we get closer to the end of the week, I'll put the essay topic on this blog.


Here's to a great upcoming week...