Hamilton YouTube Channel
Hamilton Spotify Album
Mr. McGaughey's American Government Classes |
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With all the recent attention that Hamilton: The American Musical has been getting lately, I have been trying to find ways to utilize it in my American Government classes. For those who are not familiar with all of the awesomeness that is this play, Hamilton tells the story of our Founding Fathers by focusing on Alexander Hamilton's contributions to our nation and President Washington's cabinet. Instead of it being a traditional musical, it is written and performed entirely in rap music, and is cast to make our Founding Fathers more representative of our nation today (for example, Thomas Jefferson is played by a black man). I first learned about this a few years ago after watching the writer, director, and star of the play, Lin Manuel Miranda (who plays Hamilton on Broadway) perform the first track at the White House in 2009. To get a feel for how the entire musical works, watch the video below. After listening to parts of the album on Spotify, it became very clear that this would be a PERFECT way to get kids engaged in governmental processes. For example, the musical turns one of the major debates in the Cabinet between Jefferson and Hamilton into a rap battle, and there is a full rap song devoted to the Election of 1800, which I always teach about each year during my elections unit. Playing any of these songs and having kids break down the meanings of the lyrics would be a fantastic exercise for any government teacher to do, and it will be something I do when I get to the Election of 1800 and when I explain the Cabinet during my Presidency unit. To listen to Hamilton in its entirety to find out how you can implement it into your classroom, click on the YouTube channel below or stream it through Spotify if you have (or your school has) an account set up.
Hamilton YouTube Channel Hamilton Spotify Album
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In class we have been discussing the impacts that Enlightenment Philosophers had on governmental structures within the United States. Below, use the embedded form to learn more about Thomas Hobbes and John Locke and their contributions to America's governmental systems. You should answer all questions in complete sentences, and the assignment is due by Tuesday night at 11:59 PM.
Honors American Government "Forms of Government" Article Discussion: Monday, September 21st9/20/2015 Tomorrow we will do our article discussions over the four readings for our "Roles and Forms of Government" unit. Discussion leaders will be responsible for preparing 5-10 discussion questions for their article, and all students will be responsible for reading their articles and knowing the information well enough to participate in discussion. If you need the four articles, I have provided links to all four below. Just click on the links for web versions of each article.
Article 1: 10 Reasons Why America Is Not Exceptional Article 2: Sorry President Putin, But America Is Exceptional Article 3: America Is An Oligarchy Article 4: Stop Calling the US An Oligarchy
After the events of September 1th, much of how the government treated terrorism changed forever. The United States government instituted a controversial law entitled the PATRIOT Act with the goal of allowing federal officials to have increased access to private information in order to catch terrorists within the United States. Since the inception of the PATRIOT Act, the law has come under fire by many individuals who claim that their privacy and freedoms have been compromised by the federal government.
Below, you should respond to the prompt given to you in 7-10 complete sentences. Make sure you are detailed and thorough in your responses, and make sure that you cite specific evidence from the video that is included on your Google Form. Further, you may use information included on the link below to learn more about the PATRIOT Act to help you craft your responses. Your submission will be due by Monday, September 14th at 10:00 AM. Patriot Act Information: United States Justice Department
To complete your first Crash Course video assignment, you must watch the video embedded below and answer the questions that accompany it. You must watch the video and complete all questions by no later than midnight on Wednesday, September 9th.
The 2016 Presidential Election is a little over a year away, which means that there are currently 964 viable candidates for the nation's highest office. This is actually not an exaggeration... check out the FEC's list of Form 2 Filers to see who has officially filed to run for the Presidency in 2016. Among the list of dignitaries comes your known entities such as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, and dark horse candidates such as "Beast Mode" and "Obi Wan Kenobi". To help sift through this extensive list, I had students use iSideWith to help them find their ideal 2016 Presidential match. Students used iSideWith's online political ideology survey to help match their beliefs to that of all legitimate 2016 Presidential candidates. The great thing is that the site allows students to see exactly how much they match up with their candidates by percentage AND by topic. When doing this, many students were happy to learn that their ideal candidates matched their political beliefs, while others were stunned that their ideal candidates were actually members of the political party that they tend to disagree with. To use the survey yourself, simply click on the link I provided above on the highlighted "iSideWith" text line. In class this week, we have started to establish what side of the American Political Spectrum each of you fall on. This first assignment will help you visualize where exactly you fall on the spectrum, while also giving you an idea of which candidate in the 2016 Presidential Election that your views are closest to. For this assignment, you will be completing two more political ideology surveys online using the Nolan Chart and ISideWith. You should complete both surveys by clicking on the links provided to you below, and answer the questions that correspond with the assignment sheet given to you in class. This assignment will be due on Monday, August 31st, and will be worth 40 points.
Nolan Chart Survey Link ISideWith Survey Link How Looking Back at the Past Pumped Me Up for the Future: Welcome to the 2015-2016 School Year!8/19/2015 One thing I like to do the night before every new school year is look back through letters I've received over the years from students I've had in the past. Tonight I looked back through the past three years of Teacher of the Month recommendations and letters written to me from seniors during their last week of school. I even stepped it up a notch this year and put each letter into plastic protectors (something that should have been done a long time ago), and putting them into binders. Looking back through the hundreds of letters I've been lucky enough to receive over the past few years always helps to remind me that what I do in the classroom is incredibly important, and can have huge impacts on the kids that walk through those doors. I always tell students that letters like these really make a difference for us (whether or not they know it), because it tells us that we are making a difference for them. And for teachers who are always nervous and excited about going in that first day, small gestures like that can mean all the difference in the world. Moving on from the serious stuff, I wanted to show off some of the AWESOME new additions to room 250 this year. I've decked the place out with new QR codes on posters, posted more social media instructions for Twitter and Remind, and updated the American flag charging station. I've also added some fun stuff, like way too many (but simultaneously not enough... it makes sense if you don't think about it) awesome history/government memes, and I FINALLY finished off my Presidents Pez Dispenser collection (seriously... when I got Presidents 31-35 (a murderer's row of Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and LBJ) from Amazon Prime, I was WAY too excited for any 30 year old man to rightfully be about inanimate objects). Anyway, here are some of the updates. The biggest change that was made was finally shifting away from rows and moving my desks into pods. Hopefully that will make it easier for group work, creation and collaboration, something that I am going to really focus on this year. On top of adding more variety and mind-blowing awesomeness to my classroom this year, I've decided to make it a goal to blog more. A good chunk of our online activities, classroom projects, and instructions for DBQs and essays will all be found on blog posts here. However, I'm also making it a goal to show off the awesome work that kids in my classes will be doing in here this year. Seriously, the work they do blows my mind every year, and it deserves to be shown off to more than one person who is assigning them a grade on a project. I wholeheartedly believe that parents, staff, and the community as a whole needs to see what we do in our classrooms on a day to day basis. Looking back at the great things my students have done for me in the past (such as Teacher of the Month nominations) always motivates me to do better things in the future, and I'm happy to say that going into year seven, I'm more passionate about this job than I've ever been. Here's to an awesome 2015-2016 school year!
Welcome to my class! I'm really excited for this school year, and I hope that you guys are too. The first few days are always tough for me, because I want to get to know all of you as people and as learners as fast as I can. Realistically, this can't really be done in the first few days. HOWEVER... that's not going to stop me from trying!
Throughout the past few decades, significant psychological research has been done to show that people can be broken down into four basic categories: thinkers, planners, romantics and people who thrive on action. The True Colors Personality Test works by quickly summarizing your answers to descriptive questions that, theoretically, should lump you into one of these four categories. I want to start with this survey this year because it will help me learn more about you as both a person and a student. The results of this survey will (in most cases) tell me a great deal about how you guys learn best. Hopefully, it will also help you learn more about yourselves as you enter into one of the most important growth years of your life. To take the survey, follow these instructions: 1) Using the resources I give to you in class, answer all questions for each box. I will give further instructions in class. 2) Use your surveys to score your results. Whichever set of letters gets the most points will tell you what color personality you have, and what type of person you are. 3) Finally, when you have completed your survey and you have scored your results, access this entry on the classroom blog (the URL is on the board for you) via your phones/devices. Click on the link below to access the Google Form that will serve as the survey for our results. True Colors Personality Survey Results Google Form This week, we have started preparing for our American Government End of Course Exams. To this point we have put in a considerable amount of time and preparation to make sure that we will do well on test day. However, to make sure that we prepare properly for this difficult exam you will need to make sure that you are also doing out of class prep work to help you even further. Therefore, I wanted to make sure I made some resources available to you as you continue to prepare for your exam. Below are resources that you may use to help you prepare for the American Government EOC. To access each site, click on the corresponding link before each site description (links are denoted with blue font). You may use any of these resources or all of these resources, but you should at least use some of them to help you prepare.
1) USA Test Prep: This is the resource I would recommend the most. Access the website, use the ID card given to you in class to log in to your student accounts, and pull up as many practice quizzes/tests that you can do before you test either this week or next week. 2) Quizlet: For the United States Constitution Exam I created a set of flashcards on Quizlet that many of you used to help prepare for your exam. I have also created an extensive set to help you prepare for the EOC. If you know that content is where you are currently struggling, go to Quizlet, search for the username "mcgaugheyj" on the "Search Quizlet" search bar at the top of the page, and pull up the set of flash cards I have made called "American Government: EOC Review". Or to save time, you can simply click on the link I have provided for you. 3) Missouri Government EOC "Study Guide" PowerPoint Presentation: Access this file to complete the notes that I have given you for the Missouri Government EOC "Study Guide" Google Slides Presentation. If you believe that you are struggling with content currently, doing this and studying Quizlet flash cards will help you. |
Mr. McGaugheyI have created this class blog to post announcements, resources, assignments, discussion prompts, project instructions and more. Please use the blog as a resource continuously. Archives
December 2015
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