April 13 - This week and an update on lots of things.

1) Economics: There is a long post on the Econ blog about all of the things you can do to finalize your grade in Econ.  Remember that your grade cannot go down since we left school on March 13.  So, if you are happy with your Econ grade, you can consider yourself done.  If you are not satisfied with your grade, then you can do as many of the things listed in the post on the Econ blog as you would like.

2) Government Grades: 

Government Students/Parents,

This notification is to inform you of the latest information released by the county regarding your child’s grade.  As noted, students have a choice to accept their grades as of March 13, 2020 as final grades for the 2019-2020 school year OR Continue to earn grades for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year to improve their grade(s).  For US Government and Honors US Government, students had not started this course before school closed and do not have a March 13^th grade.  It is very important for students to participate in the learning activities and assignments made available by their government teachers in order to earn a grade in that course.

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You may have seen a similar bit of language in your other classes.  This particular paragraph is a bit different because we did not yet have any grades in Government.  Overall government will work the same way as other classes.  No new grade can bring your class average down.  Missing assignments will not be put in as a zero.  Instead they will be left empty.  A student can make up that assignment at any point until the end of the semester.

The difference is that since we don't yet have any grades for government, there was nothing in the grade book on March 13.  That means once you do turn something in for a grade, it will be graded; and then you will begin to have a grade in the grade book.

3) Government Schedule: If you didn't see it, Cobb County sent out a post last week that says the school week will now be Mon-Thu.  Friday is now going to be only for students to catch up on work.  There will be no new work given on Friday's.

This means we will have to adjust our schedule.  Generally the new government schedule going forward is:

Mon: New Lecture
Tue: Work Related to that Lecture, Zoom meetings.
Wed: New Lecture
Thu: Work Related to that Lecture
Fri: Student Catch-up day.

This schedule is only tentative for each week.  It will change from time to time based on other things like tests.

Both Mr. Merrill and Mr. Baumann's class will try to have Zoom meetings on Tuesday around 10:00.  However, that also may change from time to time.

4) This Week: Despite having just established our schedule, this week we will be deviating from it.  We have finished Unit 1 of Government.  But we need to do a few things before we move on to Unit 2.  Thus our schedule for this week is:

Mon: Gov Unit 1 Vocab Quiz, Work on Finishing Up Econ
Tue: Finish up Unit 1 Government work.  Study for Test.  Zoom meetings.
Wed: Unit 1 Government Test.
Thu: Notes and work for day 1 of Unit 2
Fri: Student Catch-up day.

Some of these will be explained in more depth below.

5) Constitution Timeline Project: We gave you the instructions for the Unit 1 Timeline Project before we left school in March.  But in case you've lost it.  Here is the link again:

Unit 1 - Timeline Project

That project can now be turned in.  If you haven't finished it and want to turn it in, you can turn it in at any point going forward from today.  To turn it in, either scan your timeline into your computer or just take some pictures of it.  It will be easier for us to see if you divide it up into more than one picture and get close to the page so we can read what you've written.

6) Vocab Quiz:  Here is the link for the Unit 1 vocab quiz.  Since we have to do things a bit differently, the format is different from our normal quizzes.

The words are drawn from the Unit 1 Government Study Guide, which was handed out in class before we left, but is also available on the blog under class resources.



There are now 20 questions to a vocab quiz.  You are still giving a word for which we have given a definition.  Since you are at home, it is an open note quiz.  When you are done, just take a picture or scan in your answers and email them to your teacher.  You can take the quiz whenever you are ready to do it.  There is no specific deadline for when to turn it in, but the sooner you turn it in the sooner you can get a grade for it.

7) Unit 1 Government Test:  The Unit 1 government Test will be posted tomorrow to the blog.  It will be a "written/typed" test.  It will be an open note test.  Again, there will be no specific deadline for the test.  You can take it and turn it in when you are ready.  It will be easiest for us if you type the answers and then just email us your work, but you can also print it off, write your answers and then send us a photo.  If you do it that way, please be sure the photo is close enough to the pages that we can read what you've written. 

8) Questions?  If you have any questions you can email us, or just wait and ask them tomorrow at the Zoom meeting.