Causes of the Civil War Websites

Recently social studies students were given the task to create a website that documented the top 4 causes they believed were the most important and influential in contributing to the onset of the Civil War.

Students were first shared a Google Doc with the directions for their site challenge on it.  Students had to research (or go back and "re-research" since we had already covered these topics) the various topics and come up with the 4 they felt were the most important causes of the Civil War.

Once they had come up with their 4 and completed a pre-website planning sheet, they then used the the site template (which had directions for each of the subsequent pages) to make a copy of and start building their own site.

I guess I can't say it enough, but once again I was super impressed with what the students came up with both in their website creation and analysis of why they chose those 4 causes as the most important.  Below are several of the student's websites...check them out!  I'm sure you'll be as impressed as I was!  (FYI, the "discussion questions" section for each won't load for you...since these were internally created websites only people at MRH can see that part...sorry!)

Causes Website 1

Causes Website 2

Causes Website 3

Causes Website 4

Rockin' Exploration Websites

My students are just wrapping up their exploration unit this week.  We've literally been in this unit since we got back from winter break in January, so it's nice to be able to move into our next and final unit of the year, which is colonization.

Here are some pics of my 7th graders working hard on their sites:

However, I want to share some AMAZING websites my 7th graders just finished creating for exploration.  They were each given a website template (using Google sites and their school Gmail accounts) and a topic that we'd covered in exploration.  They then were turned loose to create a site about their topic, making sure to include all of the site requirements outlined on the template site.  I was just amazed as to what these students came up with!  Some took to other sites, such as xtranormal.com or goanimate.com to create animations about their exploration topic instead of just typing the information.  Anyways, their sites turned out great...and I wanted to share with you the site I created to house all of the students' exploration sites.  So check out the link below and enjoy!

Exploration Websites