Skip to main content

Civics Basics: Day 1


    This picture shows us talking about our timeline that we made of Houston history. 

 

    Today we went through the lesson and learned about what we are gonna study, as well as creating a social contract, and doing work about some specific philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes. We talked about who they are and why they are important and what their opinions are about laws and other things. We did a worksheet and wrote from the perspective of the philosopher and wrote about things such as who has the right to take power and direct democracy. The social contract we created shows some of our “norms”, and how we should act throughout this class. In addition to that, we talked about how we will be graded and how this class was set up to be more relaxed concerning grading. We also talk about the history of Houston, going through some of the most important events that happened here. For this, we made a slide show showing a timeline in order of these things that happened. After we finished we presented and had a discussion. Lastly, we talked about the trip and where we will be going while we are there and who we will be seeing.          

My takeaways concerning the day is that this will be interesting and fun to get to learn about the government and we will get to express our own thoughts and opinions throughout this class. We will get to talk to people from both sides of the political party and learn more about how laws are made currently. I feel confident that we will use these two weeks well and learn lots about civics as well as having fun while learning. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Civics Day 9

 W e started the day with a discussion about a newspaper article that Bernardo found on the death penalty for mentally ill prisoners. Then we watched a video from schoolhouse rock that was about how a bill becomes a law. After that we spent the next 30 minutes starting our speech projects. Then Ms. Bindu Jose showed up and we all had a long discussion about Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action. We all learned a lot about what kind of things they do in this organization and what we can do as students. We spent the last couple of minutes before lunch working on our speech project. In the afternoon we kept working on our speech project. We each picked a political issue happening in Texas and looked for sources on the democratic view, the republican view, and the independent view on the subject we picked. After writing summaries for each article we started writing our speeches. But when the Costa Rica trip got back we all left to say hi but we got right back to work after....

Civics Day 5

  We started the morning with a documentary about how Texas changed from a democratic state to a republican state. This documentary was an hour long and it was very informative. Then we had a discussion about a newspaper article that Ian found on transgender rights being taken away. We ended the morning by finding articles about what is happening during the 88th State Texas Legislature which is the one we will be attending in Austin.  In the afternoon we started by talking about each article we had chosen. We each chose one article that was about a topic that we cared about from texas tribune. After that we learned about gerrymandering in Texas and we looked at a couple of maps. Then we split into groups and  answered some questions about NAMI (national association of mental illness), Lissette Galvan, and Ann Johnson. Afterwards we came up with questions to ask them for when we get to meet them in austin. Then we wrote our reflections and filled out our week 1 self evalua...

Civics Day 7

           Today we started the morning with getting ready at 8:30 after going to sleep pretty late that night. Once we were all up we talked about the plan for the day and what we would do before we leave to come back to Houston. After, we made breakfast with the help of Amelie, Bernardo, Matt, and Mr. Wadzeck who all took part in the cooking process. We made eggs, toast, berries, orange juice, and sausage. After our meal we took a little bit more time in the airbnb until we got dressed to go to the Austin,Texas history museum. We drove to the museum and before we started exploring Ms. Harrison told the rest of the group to find on piece of art or something that interested them for their reflection of the day. We then started to explore the museum. As we looked through the museum we found many interesting finds starting with early history of Texas. Then as we got to a higher level of museum, we learned more till it got to more recent recent news about...