Letter to Member of Congress Assignment

Here are the instructions I wrote on the board for your letter to your Member of Congress.

Gift Card Survey

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Redemption Lab

Good news!  There is a way that you can improve your grade in the government class.  All you have to do is:

1. Print out a learning lab referral sheet.  You can find these in the Assignments and Resources tab.
2. Take it to learning lab (after school until 6pm)
3. While working with a tutor, complete or redo any assignment that is missing or that you got a low grade on.
4. Have have one of the tutors fill it out and sign it at the bottom.
5. Staple it to the front of your homework assignment as a cover sheet.
6. Turn your completed assignment in to the tray at the back of my classroom.

Washington, D.C. Trip

I have an exciting announcement to make.  Mr. Peterson has approved my request to take AP government students to Washington, D.C.!  To make this happen, we will need to do some serious fundraising, but I'm confident that we can do it.  There will be a meeting at 5 p.m. on August 6 at TAS to discuss this information more and answer any questions that you or your parents might have.  Please e-mail me if you have any questions.

Twitter?! Is He For Real?

Many of you have probably been wondering why I would require you to follow me on Twitter.  Contrary to what many eighth graders might tell you, it's not so that I can become "Twitter famous" or because I have any sort of self-esteem issues that having friends in cyberspace might solve.  It's simply because Twitter is an amazing way for me to improve communication with you and provide you with supplemental learning.

Believe it or not, there will be times in class when we cannot cover everything that you need to know about the U.S. government and political system (in fact, that will pretty much be the case everyday).  Twitter, I have found, is a perfect venue to quickly and effectively share a myriad of information that is pertinent to what we are talking about in class.  For example, let's say that in class we're discussing the Supreme Court and how it rules certain parts of laws unconstitutional.  As I am preparing the lesson, I might come across a story like the one here and want to share it.  With Twitter, I can copy the address, tweet it, and you immediately have access to it when you go home and check your Twitter account.

Now, you may be asking yourself: "Do I really have to check it everyday?"

The answer is: I highly recommend it.  If you want to do well on the AP exam in May, you'll want to know as much as you can about how our government and political system work.  Since I'll be mostly sharing links to real life applications of the concepts we learn in class, reviewing the articles that I share may help solidify in your brains how that concept works.  And, if you can manage to get your brain to retain those concepts, the free response (essay) sections of the exam will be a lot easier to manage.

So please, utilize this tool the way it was intended.  Don't just limit it to what I see most people your age using it for: another means of texting back and forth.  Follow people and institutions that will share enlightening information and then share that information with each other.  Share it with me; I am still learning, too, and love the way that Twitter allows me to access fresh, reliable educational material.

If you or your parents have any questions about why you are suddenly spending more time on Twitter each day, please e-mail me.  I'd love to explain the reason I use Twitter as an educational tool in greater detail.

New Website

Welcome to my new website.  It is dedicated to the AP U.S. government class that I will be teaching next year.  My hope is that it will become a great resource to students who are motivated to succeed.  Please explore and give any feedback that you have - are there any elements or features that would be useful?  E-mail me at gstoddard@apamail.org, or just leave a comment.