home

=Miss Ketcham's page=

Hello and welcome to my page. My passion in life is teaching students, I am enough to also be able to incorporate a few other passions of mine History, Reading and Technology. The place in my life that I am most comfortable is out in front of students.

Welcome to Advanced 8th grade American History

History is a subjective subject. Subjective means that something is based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. This might be out of the ordinary way of thinking about what can be come rote memorization of facts. Where did those facts come from? The human element of history is what makes the study and learning of events interesting and unpredictable. It is in the course of human events that our history has meaning. As most of you can attest to humans(people) are interesting in themselves. We constantly interact with others on a daily basis, so we all must be experts in history since history is all about people...right? Understanding people is just the beginning. Every event that has ever occured is a direct result of the human influence. It is up to historians to evaluate that interaction and derive meaning out of seemingly random events.

Now history is not just about learning about what happened. Me need to determine what happened in history and be able to express our understanding to others. "Express our understanding" this is really the key to history and what this course is all about. It is great to be able to recite the Gettysburg Address or the Preamble to the Constitution from memory, but is that what history is about? The simple answer, No. We need to use our textbook as a resource not a end all be all and we need to look at what was left behind by those who expereinced history. When we look at what was left and created by people who lived during any event/era we need to gain an understanding of what their document means as part of the whole. Once we have gained an understanding of what an event was we need to express our understanding. This expression is what is essential. Each person has a voice and opinion, when these are validated with research and shared with others is when history is created. This is when it gets exciting, leaving your footprint of history for the world to see and read. This is when you become a historian. This year you are going to become a historian, sharing your thoughts and opinons about events in our nations past.

At this point you might be thinking, "How in the world am I supposed to do this!" Wich is normal. Doing history can seem a little daunting (intimidating). Luckly for you there are reoccuring themes in the study of history. These themes revolved around the main ideas of how we think about history. How we think and learn about history is important. Critical thnking involves a plan and by understanding and using the acronym P.E.R.S.I.A. you can have a better grasp of how to do it.

 