Thursday/ Friday 19/20 December

Happy Holidays!

Class was based around a lecture on key points in the labor history of the colonies.

Notes began in 1607 with the fact that the founders of the Jamestown colony complained about labor shortages in the "new world."

We left off in 1814 with studying the "Rhode Island System" of manufacturing developed by Samuel Slater.

Remember time is running out to complete work that does not yet demonstrate proficiency!

Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday 16-17-18 December

Recovering from the snow days.

All students should have turned in their Immigration projects as of Wednesday.

The class began a unit vocabulary list that includes:
Labor (singular noun): work
Labor (plural noun): workers
Capital (singular noun): money to finance business
Capital (plural noun): monied business, or people with business interests
Capitalist: someone who uses money to make money
Union: a group of workers organized to increase their power
Corporation: an artificial person who can not die

Class also read and discussed the following:

Monday, Tuesday, (NOT Wednesday), Thursday, Friday, and beyond 9-16 December

It's been a bit of a crazy week.

Monday's blog did not post (my mistake); see below.

Important note for periods 5,6,7: Due to missing class on Wednesday, your Immigration Summation project will be due on Wednesday, 18 December, not on Monday. Period 4 the due date for your projects is still Monday, 16 December.

This week time in class was spent working on the projects. Among other activities the class developed word banks for labeling connections and relationships:

so, in order to, influence

similar, like, just as, in the same way, also

unlike, opposite, as opposed, revise, diverge

to cause, invite, help, increase, allow

discourage, force, prevent, decrease, disallow


Students have been given time to ask one another questions about the policies they propose: questions that begin with words like: how? why? what?

Tuesday/ Wednesday 3/4 December

Class began with a mini-lecture on the relationship between supply, demand, and cost.

Included in this lecture are were these general observations:

high supply = low cost
high demand = high cost
low cost = high demand
high cost = low demand or increased supply
decrease supply = higher cost

The class found examples of this in the real world and began to explore how need for labor and supplies of cheap land can effect immigration.

Next the class reviewed the following rubric and graphic organizers

Monday, 2 December

Most of class was read reading, analyzing and discussing the following article. The class paid particular attention to items that provided new information; items that illustrated conflict over immigration; and information that was surprising to us.