The Louisiana Purchase

Author's Note: This piece was written about the Louisiana Purchase. I am doing a project on it, but  this is not my reflective piece. My focus is on organization.

In 1803, one of the largest land purchases was made. The Louisiana Purchase. The Louisiana Purchase had a huge impact on the future of the United States. What would have happened if we hadn't purchased the land?  The Louisiana Purchase had a huge affect on the United States, because of the amount of new land that there was.

Napoleon Bonaparte was the leader of France. He originally bargained with Spain the rights of the United States. The bargain was the kingdom Etruria in Italy for the United States. Spain happily agreed and the Treaty of San Ildefonso was signed. Napoleon planned on using the land of Haiti (which was owned by France) as a war base. He planned on sending soldiers to the United States from there. The people of Haiti revolted, though and Napoleon’s plan failed. For this reason, he sold the United States the land of Louisiana. 

  

The final cost of Louisiana was 15 million dollars. Today if the same amount of land was purchased, it would equal 242.7 million dollars. There were over 800,000 square miles purchased. 14 whole or partial states were purchased. This nearly doubled the size of the United States.

Thomas Jefferson was the president during the time of the Louisiana Purchase. He was the one who decided to purchase the land of Louisiana. This was a wise decision because, the price of the land would have increased over time. This was only one of the big accomplishments during his presidency. He was also the one to hire Lewis and Clark to go on their expedition.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were hired by Thomas Jefferson to explore the new land. The cost for the trip was going to be around $2,500. Since there were no forms of modern transportation at the time, Lewis and Clark had to do the whole trip by foot or boat. They started the trip in 1803. Lewis and Clark called their expedition “The Corps of Discovery”. They were successful and brought back their findings to Jefferson.   

 

My original driving question was: What impact did the Louisiana Purchase have on the future of the United States? If it wasn't purchased, would we have the same protection we do today?  If the United States would have waited to buy the territory, the price of the land would have increased dramatically, and the amount of land might have even gotten smaller. The United States might not have become the great country that it is today.

Savior

Author's Note: After doing word association, I picked this as my topic. I decided to try using a new kind of poetry so I used the Diamante structure. In the Diamante structure, you start out by writing about a subject, then change to writing about the antonym. I focused on voice.

Jesus

Perfect, Holy

Redeeming, Saving, Loving

Mighty, Good, Serpent, Tempter

Hating Deceiving, Disobeying

Angry, Evil

Satan

"Nashville Scene." Nashville Scene. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct. 2011. <http://nashvillescene.com>.

Friend

Author's Note: In this piece, I tried writing a Cinquain poem. Let me know what you think!

Friend

A friend listens.

They will be there for you,

and they make life a lot more fun.

Partner

Me and my best friend, Jordan!

Cross my Heart and Hope to Spy

Author's Note: In my pieces last year, I tended to struggle with Sentence Fluency. In this piece, I counted my sentence lengths to try to vary them more.

Gallagher Academy. A school for exceptional young women. To the world, that's all it is. In reality, it's a school for spies. Cammie Morgan, the headmistress' daughter, had grown up at this school and is a well trained spy.  She can speak fluently in 14 languages, and takes martial arts in gym class.  Then Cammie and her friends learn about "Blackthone". With teamwork, determination, and help from another spy school, Cammie and her friends have to fight to protect their school.

 I would strongly recommend this series for anyone who likes action. The author, Ally Carter, does a great job describing everything in the story. All the situations seemed real. The only thing I would change to the story is the ending. It isn't as clear as the rest of the story. Overall, this story was really good, and really fun to read.

Academy 21

Author's Note: I wrote this piece for the ACMS newsletter. The purpose of this piece was to inform people about what's new in Academy 21. Let me know what you think!

In Academy 21 both seventh and eighth graders are working hard on their first projects of the year. These projects include career exploration, taste testing, and  Cold War project. New to Academy 21 this year is the Project Management Schedule. All of the projects require students to fill out a project management form on Google Documents for all of their projects. This form has students assign themselves specific tasks, the status ( done, in progress, open), the estimated complete time, and more. It really helps students accomplish  their goals and it helps them with completing their projects on time. Students also have weekly meetings with their advisors. The advisors check the progress of the student's projects and Blogs.

Also new to Academy 21 this year is the 1:1 math program. Students still use ALEKS, but have 1:1 math meetings, weekly or bi-weekly with their assigned math teacher. Also, Academy 21 students are free to go to the math center anytime that they need help. Students in Academy 21 have all made a digital portfolio. This portfolio has links to the students blogs, projects, and their master rubric. This is useful to students because they can use similar portfolios later in life to display all of their work.