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Confederation, confederation, confederation

Mallory has a big Social Studies test today. She’s not doing well in Social Studies, this year. When I asked her why her grades were so low, she said, “I don’t like Social Studies. Besides, no one can be good at everything.” I thought this was a fair point, but let her know that it was not acceptable for her to do quite so poorly, whether she liked it or not.

We studied for hours for this test. We read the chapter twice, summarized main points, went over vocabulary words, filled in blanks and did true/false quizzes. There were moments when I despaired – as when I asked, “The villages of the Cherokee people came together to form a...” and she said, “Um...bison?” But I think she knows the material pretty well; honestly I’m not even sure what else we could have done to get her prepared. I told her we would like for her to get at least a B.

I know she’s nervous. I’m nervous for her. I slept poorly all night.

But, I also know more than I really wanted to know about the early peoples of North Carolina. Ask me about the Three Sisters or the Green Corn Ceremony! And think good thoughts for her today around 1:30.

Comments

Karen said…
Good luck to Mallory. I think that SS is hard for most kids because they don't see the point of learning all of that "stuff." They don't see the relationship of the material with their lives.
10:07 AM
mimi said…
and Native American History can be daunting...I took a whole year of it in college as well Native American Religion...it is not easy to study if you dont like it. I wish I could help her. History and Social Studies were the 2 subjects that I really did well in.
10:30 AM
Abbey said…
Hope it went well. I feel for her as I HATED planning for social studies as a teacher. The books were terrible and the content was dry.
1:53 PM
aimee said…
Oh social studies. Hope she did well and I, too, know more than I wanted about Oklahoma history from helping the boys study.
1:35 AM
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