Anna's Class Notes

Our discussion of evolution and the long history of the universe led to an investigation of time-

lines. The class created personal timelines marked by important events in their own lives. Through

this investigation we compared the units of months and years that mark the children's lives with the

history of the universe, which is recorded in billions of years. This is a huge concept! The children

compared their own timelines, which span eight or nine years on this planet, with the 13 billion

year old universe's timeline.

Our focus in writing has shifted from letters to persuasive speeches. These speeches are based

on the children's opinions and ideas about how to make the world around them a better place.

They are identifying problems, imagining solutions, stating claims, forming theses and learning to

support their theses with reasons and examples. The students have been generating ideas and pre.

senting their speeches to each other to receive feedback.

In launching our speech writing project we identified a problem at school that the class agreed

needed to be addressed: we need more shovels at Hayground! Several students took this cause on

and wrote speeches that I recorded and delivered to the faculty at our weekly faculty meeting. The

faculty was convinced that we do in fact need more shovels!