This year in History, the middle school students are covering Ancient Civilizations, spanning from the early development of civilizations through the times of Ancient Rome. We are presently halfway through our unit on the early Middle Eastern civilizations focusing on Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. We just recently wrapped up our project on Ancient Mesopotamia. The students were assigned the task of creating a children’s book explaining the significance of Mesopotamia in a way a child could understand. They then had an author’s reading where they got to read their books to the class!
At the high school level, we are currently learning about the importance of campaign finance, and have begun learning about bias and methods of persuasion. Earlier in the week, we wrapped up the campaign finance portion with a class wide debate on whether or not campaigns and special interest groups should have stricter limits in order to ensure fairness, or if stricter regulations on campaign finance would violate our freedom of speech. It was a well-researched debate where the students excelled! We have now begun learning about methods of persuasion and understanding bias, and will be applying these methods of persuasion by watching some famous historical campaign ads and seeing how they presented their arguments in order to make our students more informed citizens with a healthy skepticism of their media.
Nick Constantino - Upper School History Teacher