8th Grade SOS #18

Christmas at the White House
Use the White House Christmas Packet, read "The Lincoln Family Christmas" and then turn to the following page and choose one Discussion Question to answer and one Writing Prompt to response to on the blog.  PLEASE proofread your answers to ensure complete sentences and thoughts, stellar grammar and spelling, and correct capitalization.

If you are interested, click on the following link to view some of the decorations at the White House. (http://dc.about.com/od/christmasphotos/ss/ChristWhiteHous.htm)

8th Grade SOS #17

Navigate to TriviaPark.com (http://triviapark.com/quizzes/xmasquiz.html) and choose from one of three Christmas Quizzes; novice, regular, or expert.  Upon quiz completion, return to the blog and respond to the following questions:
1.  What was your score and rating (if given)?
2.  Which question stood out as an easy question or a "given" that you knew you would get right?
3.  Which question (or questions) surprised you and what did you learn?
4.  Did you feel the quiz was accurately leveled?  Explain.
5.  Write a Christmas question of your own and see if anyone can answer it correctly on the blog.

8th Grade SOS #16

After reading the excerpt below from Harriet Beecher Stowe's concluding words in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," reflect and write on the following questions:

• What arguments did Stowe put forth against slavery?
• What audience was she trying to reach with her message?
• Women in the nineteenth century could not vote, so why did Stowe make a point of addressing mothers?

"The writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish and despair that are, at this very moment, riving thousands of hearts, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair. There are those living who know the mothers whom this accursed traffic has driven to the murder of their children; and themselves seeking in death a shelter from woes more dreaded than death … "And you, mothers of America … I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom! … I beseech you, pity those mothers that are constantly made childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of America, is this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over in silence? Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom. "If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and, proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves … "… You pray for the heathen abroad; pray also for the heathen at home. And pray for those distressed Christians whose whole chance of religious improvement is an accident of trade and sale; from whom any adherence to the morals of Christianity is, in many cases, an impossibility, unless they have given them, from above, the courage and grace of martyrdom."

8th Grade SOS #15

As you work on your Free-Soil Party Campaign posters, it might be helpful see learn about the campaign slogans of the past.  Candidates used slogans that reflected who they were, what that stood for, what they had accomplished, and/or what they hope to accomplish as President of the United States.  Click on the FactMonster site (http://sf.factmonster.com/quizzes/slogans/1.html) and that the campaign slogan quiz.  Then, return to the blog and reflect on the following:
1.  record your score.
2. which slogan seemed unusually or bizarre?  Explain.
3.  which slogan would win you over or get your attention? Explain.