Trial, Earthquakes, Essays and more

We had another successful trial chalk full with critical questions and answers. Three groups (the poor, wealthy elite and the British) were charged with the mistreatment, suffering and deaths of thousands of men, women and children. The British (Faolan, Will and Finn with lovely British accents) were accused with focusing purely on profit and being undiplomatic. The Poor (Milo, Peyton and Raven) were accused with allowing the minority wealthy elite to manipulate them into fighting a war and not uniting to change the terrible living conditions underwhich they lived. The Wealthy elite (Jesse, Isaac and Kiva) were charged with things such as fueling racism to divide people so that they could stay in control. Also, the elite were charged with writing the Constitution with the interests only of the wealthy in mind. Our prosecuter/judges (Iona, Ben and Rasulan), with the aid of Ariel and a visiting Elizabeth Downes, assigned responsibility to all the groups, finding the wealthy elite as having more responsibility than the other groups.

Students have been interacting with resources on earthquakes, taking notes on a wide variety of topics. They took detailed (and not so detailed) notes and are going through the process of writing topic sentences, determining how to organize their facts, and writing reports. While writing, students are seeing that the quality of notes they took are having a big impact on their ability to retell facts.

More writing... this morning Faolan and Ben led two peer editing groups. The kids have been working on 5 paragraph essays, responding to questions inspired by their bookgroup book (Three Cups of Tea and The Giver). The focus of the groups were revising their supporting details to be more clear and powerful. Every student listened and gave thoughtful feedback with no adult prompting. On the flip side, every student shared their writing and made changes in several places. Beyond revision, minilessons were taught on introductions, conclusions, and how to present one's ideas in the most persuasive ways. Students are having more conversations about writing and subsequently I am reading great progress.