Andrew Jackson Had a Few Issues...

Last week my history teacher wasn't able to be in class to teach us about Andrew Jackson because she was traveling. Instead of giving us packets of work to do, she let us create creative projects of our choice as long as it demonstrated our understanding of the lesson. We began this unit by attempting to answer the essential question, which says, "Is Andrew Jackson's long-standing reputation as 'the people's president' deserved? Why? Why not?"

My group was assigned to learn about the Spoils System. We learned that the Spoils System was a system where supporters of political candidates were promised jobs in exchange for their continued support. We created a small film trailer, which was supposed to be funny and was fun to film. The other groups learned about the Bank War and how having a Bank of America was not good because it would have too much power in the hands of too few people. The final group learned about conflicts with the Native Americans, and how Andrew Jackson passed a law that enabled him to enforce American laws on the Native Americans and eventually force the Native Americans out of their homes. As the Native Americans were forced to travel west, up to 10,000 of them died on the journey, which was known as the Trail of Tears.

Here is the video we created in class about the spoils system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQuR-ctdsRs

Creating A Spiderweb... With Glitter

This is a poster that I created with my group yesterday in history class.  Learning about the information displayed on our poster was difficult for me because I was absent the day that we analyzed key documents. My group and I completed this poster about the rise of democracy.  A democracy is "a form of government in which the supreme power invested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system."The United States was not very Democratic in the 1800s because of its lack of voting freedom for all citizens. Only white men who owned land could vote which is not democratic. This changed in 1820-1850 as more and more people were given the right to put there say into how the United States is governed.

 The definition of democracy is quoted from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/democracy