Thursday, September 20, 2007

scribe-BritneyB.

On Wednesday, we learned how to usu the second part of toon doo. There were no handouts that were giving out. We worked on our project through out the whole class. Our class was suppose to know how to upload the toon doo on wikispaces.
In class, Jamie followed direction on wikispaces so she got done with her work by herself without getting help of Mr.Armstrong. Mandy used her time wisely becuase she worked on revising her English and than she did toon doo, too. She made wise choice by working hard and getting two works done on the same day. No one have said anything that was interesting. Andy Lee and Alex Lee helped several people out with other people's computer. This post was written late because I did not know how to do the scribe. I apologize for not posting this scribe on the right time.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The day that Mr. Armstrong announced"Create your own Comic Book" - Cindy M. 8C


Today, like always we shook our hand with Mr. Armstrong and he told us the color so we can sit in a table. After that Mr. Armstrong called out the attendance, like always everyone said “here” but again Walter was the only one who said “Yoo-Hoo” and we always laugh. When he said we do not have a test on this week everyone was cheering and all of sudden they were in happy mode. Then Mr. Armstrong said we have some kind of project which was comic creation, people’s face expressions some people were happy and excited about it but some people did not but still whether they like it or not they had to do the comic creation. Later he said the number that they have it for their computer, it is the number of your topic. Some people liked their number or the topic but some did not most of the people who had 1-8 they were kind of complaining that how can they show on the comic book. After that we had discussion in their tables about their topic, people got some ideas, information, and advices for making the comic book. Anyway, people thought that we had to make the comic book by their art skills. But later on in class our teacher said “you are creating your comic book by computer” In that second he spoke about that everyone was shocked and just said “eh?” As he explained about the comic book and how to create on computer everyone’s eyes and ears were focused on Mr. Armstrong. People were interesting about the comic creation cite. The rest of the class was playing with the comic creation site to know how it runs and how it is done.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Discussion and Getting Info - YoungKyu K 8D


Today, everyone of our class mates did their note taking. I think everyone (including me) was scared about what happened last week. The class started with Mr. Armstrong doing attendence. He called nicknames for people and it was really funny. I hope he does that every class. Then the class began and the first part of the class, we shared information about the Puritan dissenters with our groups. Everyone in our group had good information and so Mr. Armstrong was happy with our group and probably other groups too. After the discussion, we went over some more information with Mr. Armstrong. When I went over information with Mr. Armstrong, I had a very clear vision of what the Puritan dissenters did. I always have a clearer vision of the informations after going over it with Mr. Armstrong. He makes them easy to understand and also it is fun. The picture in the slideshow was espicially helpful and gave me a very good idea of how the colonies were like in the New England.
At the end of class, Mr. Armstrong said that we did a very good job today in class. That made everyone happy. Today's class went really well and I hope it would be like this everyday.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Discussion with Classmates - Allison L. 8C

In friday, September 14, we went to Mr. Armstrong's class and we were divided into five groups. After taking attendance, we get our notebooks that has notes about the dissenters. For the people who didn't taked notes had to take it when the groups had discussions. We started to discuss about the major three people which are Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, Thomas Hooker, and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. Some people took notes that they didn't have in their notebook. After Mr. Armstrong checking our notebooks, we took notes from the powerpoint. There were only significant points of the three people. After watching the powerpoint presentation, we could understand more easily about the division of Protestant and Puritans by Mr. Armstrong's art. First it was little confusing because there were many dividing, like Puritans came out of Protestants, and Puritans were again divided. However, Mr. Armstrong made it easier. After writing our homework, the class ended.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Chicken Pox Kills!- Terry K. 8D

Today, in social studies class, we had done a lot to help each other understand things we weren't sure about. Claire brought up a question that a lot of people needed help to understand on. Claire was probably today's superstar because if it wasn't for her, many of us wouldn't have had the courage to ask more questions and just go on to the next topic without truly understanding it. We reviewed the significance of the Mayflower Compact, General Court, John Winthrob, Squanto, and William Bradford. We cleared many of our questions during just a short period of time in our class.
Later, we got more information on the true story of Squanto. Mr. Armstrong wanted to show us information not in textbooks to show that the textbooks don't tell all the true or right information. It was kind of shocking and amazing to find the reasons why Squanto could speak English and was in the Wampanoug tribe. Eddie brought up a funny thought of how people could die of chicken pox.
He was thinking something crazy and talking about how a high fever made by chicken pox xan kill you.
After all that review, we took THE quiz. We took it on a new internet site called quia. It allows our class to take quizzes on the computer. If there are no short answer questions, we could get our grade right after our quiz was taken. There are some downfalls to this due to some emergency cases that happens during the course of the quiz like your computer connection goes down and closes the site. The quiz was quite easy especially since Mr. Armstrong gave us quite a bit of time to study before our quiz. We were able to get our grades right after our quiz. I am quite happy about my grade.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The Day of the TEST!!=) Gloria L. 8C

Today was the day. Where everyone feared and worried for it was the day of our first quiz! All the students were msning the night before discussing what might come out on the quiz. But when we cam e to class, while the students were in worry, Mr. Armstrong explained about the separation of England people mainly because of religion and split the class and made the boys Catholics and the girls Puritans. Later he separated the girls by Puritans and the Protestants. Later then he separated the group of puritans from a group of puritan dessenters which was what we were gonna learn about in tonight's week 4 immersion. After that whole incident we got handouts to learn a little further more on indentured servants which we really thought all indentured servants got good rights though we now learned all the hardships and we got a chance to actually understand at least a little more about indentured servants. Our expextatioins to learn from our homework today is to learn deeply about the Puritan Dissenters and watcg videos about them.
All classmates helped each other today when Mr. Armstrong gave us the 5-10 minutes of study time right before the quiz. We took the social studies quiz on an online internet quiz source called "QUIA" and it was a very organized test and approached to us as a test in a new way which a majority of our classmates liked better in my opinion and that we can see our scores right after we're done. All of our classmates used their time wisely enough so after they were finished with their test they were working on the immersion we had for this week. Overall today's social studies class seemed to pass by so quick which I think it was because of the quiz.

Gloria Lee 8C

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The GREAT Seminar of 8C!! -by Christine L.

In today’s class, we had a seminar on week three immersion. This week’s immersion focused on the middle passage, the triangular trade route, which were basically the factors that led to development of slavery in the colonies. Other main ideas were the conditions of slavery ships going through the middle passage, what role the religion played in helping the New England colonies get established, and how the political, economic, and social situation of the New England colonies and the Southern colonies differed and how they were similar in some ways.

As usual, our seminar started out with Walter’s clear loud voice. Not only introducing new facts and answers to the factors of slavery development, our class students also brought up the ideas that we discussed last week about slavery. Soho gave a very good description of how the triangular trade route worked in detail. What the middle passage is was also discussed though the facts about the conditions of slavery ships bound for the middle passage were not discussed in depth. I think we got great explanation from Patrick about the role of religion played in the establishment of New England colonies. While talking about the role of religion, we got in depth with the Catholics and Protestants which also introduced to the topic of Separatists, Pilgrims, moving to Plymouth Bay on Mayflower which led to Mayflower Compact and then to Great Migration of the Non-Separatists group to Massachusetts. Our class also did a good job with compare and contrasting New England colonies and the Southern colonies.

We had a lot of information that we had to cover this week so in the seminar we also had many facts and ideas to talk about. Because of that reason, I think we ran short on time and several people did not get to participate in the seminar. But still it was a good discussion time with our class and we were able to understand better on the main ideas we covered this week.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Apology to Mr. Armstrong Suzie K. 8D

Today, we were assigned in each group tables, and were ordered to take out a piece of loose leaf paper as usual. This was because Mr. Armstrong had wanted to check whether every student had taken good notes on the week's immersion, which are supposed to be organized and cited with the information's source. He told us each key terms we learned in the week and asked the students to define each terms, using their new knowledge and referring to their notes also. After the short quiz, the students were informed to work as a group, each of the group members taking turns explaining the key terms in short sentences. This activity had been able to give the students a short practice of the seminar the students needed to prepare for the next day. The first person to speak out in the table is able to give the most basic information of the word and as there are more people adding information about the term, it is harder for the latest person to explain this word. So, the last person has the job of combining the information that was said, organizing the whole seminar. However, this activity had not worked out as planned and did not give much improvement to the students. Most of the students had not been prepared for class; there were some whom did not have their notes or even do it. Because of this it was difficult for the activity to move on easily, since students whom did not do their homework had nothing to say in the group, only making a waste of time. Mr. Armstrong was very disappointed to the class of such less preparation, and how many had not been able to fulfill his expectations. The students also regretted in such misbehavior. By these reasons, Mr. Armstrong had no choice but to review a part of the lesson that was for week 3. By his review and explanation, classmates whom did not do their notes were still able to understand the basic information which was to be learned in the further week. After the class, the students had talked of how they felt bad of what had happened in the class. We all apologize to Mr. Armstrong of such bad behavior as a student which has disappointed you greatly. Also the students whom are responsible for this, has learned that they should put more effort in to their own learning.

Understanding the information better

After we shook hands with Mr. Armstrong, we were divided into groups first. Then we took the second pop quiz , which also allowed us to see our notebooks to see if we got enough information about the key terms. The questions were defining the Mayflower compact, puritans, William Bradford and Samoset & Squanto. After that, each group got to talk about the New England Colonies; about the Mayflower, puritans, pilgrim, William Bradford, Mayflower Compact, Samoset & Squanto, General Court, John Winthrop and apprentice. It was more like a waterfountain-talk like we did previously; group by group. The waterfountain talk allowed us to obtain informations that we needed. For the rest of the class period, Mr. Armstrong defined us more accurately about the difference between puritans and pilgrim. He used pictures, also known as armstrong-art, to understand about the information better, which did allow us to comprehend it better.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

What we did today... Kaila Kim 8C


Yesterday, as we entered Mr. Armstrong’s room, we sat at the seat which our name cards were on. Of course, he checked the attendance, and the class began. First, we watched a video which we supposed to watch but didn’t work. Mr. Armstrong said it was because anyone cannot download that video and upload it in another site. Anyways, we watched the video called ‘Slave ship’ and it was about slaves being locked in the ship for a week, months, or years. After watching that video, Mr. Armstrong showed us 8th Grade US History Blog, what countries are using this site. After, he handed out the lab top, and we could immerse ourselves into the information in Unit 1, chapter 3. We took notes by reading the site and watched video that Mr. Armstrong put it in wikispaces. He turned on the music and opera songs came out. It made us focus better. For the video, we had to put earphones. Mr. Armstrong went around and answered questions that we asked him. As the bell rang, the class ended.

History is Fun, But Hard-Joshua K. 8D

Today in History class, everything started with Mr. Armstrong's loud, deep voice like he did usually. We wrote the homeworks in our agenda after the attendence. The homework was only writing 2 comments in different people's discussion, and taking notes for the seminar which will be on Monday. Mr. Armstrong went over the homework, which was writing notes about the Middle Passage, by using Jay Lee to demonstrate the real situation that happened long time ago. Jay Lee was the captain of the ship and he went to Terry Kim for Africa and took Terry Kim to Nick Yun colony, which was the Americas. For getting the slave, Jay Lee got sugar, tobacco and other things to England. By Jay Lee showing the triangular trade route, it was better to understand. After knowing the basics, Mr. Armstrong showed us a video which was related to the slaves on the way to Americas. The slaves were very desperate in the video, can see that they didn't get treated well. We turned on the computer that was on our desk at the beginning after we watched the slaves going throught Middle Passage. We took notes for like about 20 minutes and the bell rang.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Group Review of Unit 1- Micky Kim

Yesterday, we had lots of fun reviewing what we learned for the past few week. We had used different graphic organizers that were given to us by Mr. Armstrong. We were assigned into groups and wrote into our organizers. After that, we discussed the answers as a class, but what came next was the something amazing, that only our grade had seen: Armstrong Art! Using the suggestions and the information that every student gave, Mr. Armstrong drew pictures of the southern colonies and how things came to be. We drew ours on a A4 paper that the teacher gave us. The next part of our class was talking about the Triangular Trade System and about how the slave population would get higher and higher. After the discussion, Mr. Armstrong handed out a sheet with info on the topic. For our homework, we have to take notes and watch a video online.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Working together - Stella Kim

Today we worked on understanding the things we reviewed.
First of all we worked in groups. In the groups we had a chart where we filled out what colony came first, date, importance and all those kind of information. This helped us understand better.
Also for the people who "forgot" remembered easily. It was fun out of all the other classes, no offense and all, but we got to learn more. Other time it was free research so some of us weren't that sure. Armstrong art helped us learn more too. It gave us a visual sight on what we learned. Today we achieved on working together, cooperating, and reviewing what we learned.