Welcome!

Welcome to U.S. History Class!  I'm excited about getting to know you this year and learning about the history and culture of our nation with you.  I set up this blog to facilitate communication and to have a place to post assignments, short articles, film clips, and links to interesting websites.  First, I am posting here a portion of an email that you have seen previously regarding the your summer work:

The main summer requirement is to become familiar with the native people living in the Americas - both North and South before the 'Age of Exploration'.  In this class I will use the term American Indian as opposed to Native American.  In most US history classes students only learn of these peoples as they meet them through various conflicts.  I want my students to have an idea of who was where, what they were like, how they lived, what they believed, and how they governed themselves before we begin.  I recommend  Holling C. Holling's Book of Indians, but feel free to explore on your own - there are lots of books in the library.

The second most important summer assignment is related to the first.  I would like students to visit a living history site, or at least a historical site or a museum exhibit related to American Indians.  If you aren't travelling very far this summer their is a nice exhibit at the Schiele Museum in Gaston Country.

The third assignment is to practice drawing the United States.  Students should be very familiar with the outline of the US, the location of the main geographical features and location and shape of our states.  Actually it's not a bad idea to have a general idea of the shape and location of Canada and South America as well -  go ahead and practice drawing the outline North and South America.

If students have not recently read The Little House on the Prarie series now is the perfect time.  There are a lot of ideas and themes in our class that are related and described in that series.

I'll be making some more posts throughout the remainder of the summer, so you might want to subscribe to this blog or click the link to join this site so you will know when a new post is made.

See you soon!

Mrs. Amber