We begin the year with the study of Colonial times, Declaration of Independence, American Revolution, Constitution, Civil War and everything in between.
We are focusing on the Common Core State Standards in this class. To find out more information about Common Core Standards, please visit: http://www.corestandards.org/
To see the standards specific to this class, please visit: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/RH/6-8
Your child will have some work that is strictly homework, but a majority of the work for my class is started in class and the homework part is whatever they didn't finish during class time. Most students, if they use their class time wisely, should have little to no homework.
A major focus in my class is Literacy and learning how to pull key facts and important information out of factual text books. Sometimes, the work we are doing is less about the content and more about the skill of note-taking or another study skill. Obviously, the content is important, but if the students can learn how to access informational texts independently, there is no content that is out of their reach.