You are invited to come and see our work

These are some of the quotes we picked for our hallway display about civil rights and the right of non-violent protest.

We finished our English unit with a big writing project, too. Everybody got to pick a project. We had about 8 choices. We wrote sentences or essays. We did some research. We made a "KWL" chart on our classroom wall. "K" is for what we already KNOW. "W" is for what we WANT to find out. "L" is for what we LEARN as we do our research. We read articles, watched videos, read a speech, had discussions, got some library books, and talked about recent non-violent protests like Mni Wiconi at Standing Rock. It was really a lot of work!

The essays and paragraphs were hard but we did a good job. We used this writing process:

The writing process goes in a circle. In case you are wondering, a "spider" is a visual outline or graphic organizer. One spider makes one paragraph when we have to write the sentences. 

You should come and read our essays on the wall because they are really very impressive. When we had Parent Conferences, parents got to read them and they liked them a lot. A bunch of middle school students stopped to read them on their way to class. One said, "This is really interesting!" Another middle school student wanted to know if he can be in this class when he gets into high school.

 When we learned about non-violent protests like at Standing Rock or Montgomery, Alabama, we saw a lot of people with signs that they made. The signs told their truth. Sometimes the police and the government did not want to see the truth.

For our display, we painted signs to tell our truth. They go with our essays. The big one (that got chopped in the picture) says "Mitakuye owasin." That means we are all related. Even us and the people marching in the videos that we saw. That is part of our truth.

Please come see our work. Pidamaya!