School Year 2013/2014

Welcome to a new year, and welcome to my social studies class. I am excited about trying some new teaching techniques and working with students to become better students overall. This year is the first year that I have been assigned to teach two 'honors' classes which will cover the same curriculum while digging deeper and reaching further than the other classes. I will be focusing on writing in all of my classes this year so there will be an emphasis on that type of expression. As in past years, I will continue to incorporate current events in to my lessons whenever applicable to help students see the relevance of world history today. This year I administered a pretest which measured the background knowledge of each student as well as 30 minute writing assignment. The scores for these assessments are irrelevant in the sense that they will not 'count' toward the grade of a student but very relevant in terms of helping me plan for the year. Both assessments were given in class within the first week of school. I will end the year with a post-test which will be exactly the same as the pretest. I hope to see growth in each and every student. I am confident that I will. I hope that this year is a great one and I will post updates from time to time as the year goes on.