What have you learned?

You have now been in this class for nearly 4 months. I believe you have learned a great deal about government. Here is your chance to prove it. The field is wide open, anything from classwork, the book, current events, activities, etc. What do you now understand that you did not 4 months ago? If done correctly this could be a great semester test review.

Current Issues Project

By the end of your research, you will (or should) know more about your topic than the vast majority of Americans. Here is your chance to share important and or interesting things you learn in your research. What is the problem? Is it really a problem? Why is it so hard to fix? Etc.

State/Local

Any state or local issue. Remember to tie it into government class.

National Current Events

Same as before. Any current events that you can connect to Federal Government. Please try to make that connection

Presidents and Others

We are obviously short on class time to do justice to our current presentations, so here is you chance to expand on our limited class discussion. Who did what to change the Presidency? Which candidates have the best chance to become president? Any comments on accomplishments or pet issues for our other representatives?

Student as Scribe

In this post an assigned student will provide a summary of the days lesson. Was there an assignment or reminders? This should include a summary, how the lesson relates to the "essential question" or "big idea", helpful maps, links, videos, etc. that would be useful to understand or review the day's lesson. This is worth up to 15 points and will be graded on content, creativity, effort and timeliness. Your initial post is due one day after your assigned class, but feel free to add to it as your understanding of the topic expands. At the top of your post you must put the date you are scribing about and your scribe number!
3 reasons for this assignment: 
1. Allows one student to dig deeper into a given topic and do some research, critical thinking and even teaching. 
2. Help anyone who missed that day for whatever reason. 
3. If we do this right this should be a great tool to use when preparing for tests

Blog Assignment

Each student will participate in this blog. For each grading period, you will post two different types of responses:  general discussion (typically one paragraph, based on opinion, previous knowledge or things you have learned in class) and researched post (three paragraph MINIMUM, based on original research and cited). Please refer or link us to interesting web sites, videos, etc. as well as offering us the information you have found.

Reminders:
To get credit for a post you must have a new insight or thought. A sentence or two just agreeing or disagreeing with a previous post will not be worth full credit!
Nothing that is school inappropriate!
No personal attacks, you can disagree with an idea, but do it in a respectful manner and try to get beyond the name calling you might hear on TV. Nearly all political topics are much too complicated to discuss intelligently by simply giving them a derogatory label.
I challenge you to use this to explore interesting topics, but remember everyone in class is going to see this, so don’t “spill your guts” unless you are sure you want everyone to hear it.
If you use an outside source for information (and you need to!) you need to make a citation.

Rubric
For each grading periods you need to do 3 discussion posts, each worth up to 4 pts.
4 - one solid paragraph with a new thought, idea or response to another post.
3 - not complete enough to be a "4"

Researched (Do one of these each grading period worth up to 13 pts.)
13 - 3 or more good paragraphs with new points, references to source(s) OUTSIDE of class and text and very well written.
10 - Lacking quality or depth to be a 13, but solid response.
4 - Lacking quality, depth, length, or research base to qualify for an 10 or 13.

* This cannot be a "discussion" if everyone waits until the last day so you MUST post periodically (biweekly or more often) or you will lose points. Some posts will have a specific due date. Please pay attention.
PLAGIARISM WILL RESULT IN A ZERO FOR THE GRADING PERIOD! NO WARNINGS!