1st Quarter Recap

This first quarter in US History has been fairly successful. I haven't learned about US History since the Eighth Grade so this first quarter has been a good refresher and opener with the Civil War and Slavery. This quarter I have learned a lot more than I usually do the first quarter of History. I have learned about paraphrasing and incorporating quotes in my paraphrasing, which I was helpful. Interpreting if a source is "high quality", like the difference between the NY Times and a 10 year olds blog about the movie Glory. We also discussed the difference between empathy and sympathy, learning about analyzing primary sources for the two films we watched and then putting our skills to the test by hyperlinking, blogging, posting it, uploading the blog, and captioning a photo in the blog. We had started off the year by learning about the Civil War and how connects to slavery even in the South and North of the United States. And after the Civil War how their was a constitution but not a real one because African Americans did not have as many rights as they do now and as the whites in the United States. This lead to discussion of Black Codes which led to Reconstruction. After we were done with the Civil War and slavery we went straight to the topic of the Western and different events that had occurred during this time. We had used the topic of Empathy to understand the films, Glory and Twelve Years a Slave. We also had drawn conclusions from data about the films sales made from Box Office. Also how slavery was more involved in southern states and who it connects to them being the poorest states in the United States.

Overall from this first quarter in US History I have grown as a better writer and thinker. Writing in my blogs and with the skills of posting a blog, paraphrasing, and hyperlinking items that needed to be hyperlinked. This quarter my areas that I have really succeeded in was paraphrasing and incorporating in quotes in my paragraphs. I have thought a lot more about the significance of my homework and classwork. I realize if I didn't pay attention in class, I would not be able to understand how to do my homework or participate in discussions in our small groups. I understood how to paraphrase important items that would benefit my essays in the future. In History I hope to grow to make my blogging more efficient. By instead of writing full on paragraphs on my notecards, bullet points that are less wordy. Also showing more evidence in my essay would have benefited me.  I now know how to actually paraphrase a paragraph without feeling conscience about turning it in. And I feel more confident with identifying accurate and important "high-quality" sources that will benefit my writing and learning skills. Last year in my works cited I missed the most last year because my citations didn't have a certain level of accuracy in the. I hope to further my knowledge of the Western part of the United States, as I have not particularly learned this before. I'd like to understand more about the involvement of the United States in World War II. This quarter's work and effort I have put is how I will be working the next 3 Quarters in US History.