Voting Rights and Issues

Essential Questions: 

1. What did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 say?

2. Why was the Voting Rights Act necessary? What effects has it had?

3. Why have some people challenged the Voting Rights Act in recent years?

4. How are voting rights threatened today? How can we protect those rights?

Sources to Explore:

• Signing the Voting Rights Act (1 1/2 minutes) and transcript of the video
• The Right to Vote (14 minutes) and transcript of the video
• Number of Black Legislators in the South (1868-1900 and 1960-1992) (PDF)
• Percentage of Registered Voters in Black Voting-Age Population (PDF)
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (PDF)
• Supreme Court Re-Examines 1965 Voting Rights Act and transcript of the video
• Supreme Court Narrowly Allows 1965 Voting Rights Act to Stand and transcript of the video
• States With Voting Restrictions (PDF)
• Percentages of People Who Lack a Government-Issued Photo ID (PDF)
• Voting Issues Today (PDF)

Please explore these sources and posts your response to the essential questions in a blog post!

Zooming In and Out

This quarter, we will be exploring the question...

How do stories shape our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world? 

As a way to start thinking about this, the students participated in a team challenge, putting together the pages of the picture book Zoom. Here are some pictures of the teams in action.

After they applauded their hard work, they debriefed and came up with some important reflections about what happened as they did the activity. Can't wait to start zooming in and out of texts with them!

First Week of Sixth Grade, 2016

Welcome to Sixth Grade Language Arts! I'm excited for our year ahead of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and growing.

This week, we have been thinking about the question, "Who are you?" We started by creating "Stick Figure Me" portraits which families will see displayed at Open House. We also personalized our Reader's/Writer's Notebooks and started creating our Heart Maps. As we launch our reading and writing for the year, I want to share a Langston Hughes poem for some inspiration.

Over the weekend, students will be gathering their materials for the Brown Bag Bio projects. The students have a paper packet with all of the information and rubric, but in case you want to check it out, you can click here for the Google Doc version. Students will be practicing their presentations and receiving some feedback at home in order to help prepare for their presentation at school. We will use these as a benchmark for our presentation skills and work on what's needed as the year continues. Can't wait to see all of the unique contents of everyone's bag!