Some of Our Students' Work

We wish we had space and time to publish everything our students create in the course of the year. The variety, imagination, and growing skills are truly impressive. But we can at least share some representative samples.

Check back often as we add new things, including downloadable files that will be listed at the bottom of this page.

Excerpts from our Wagon Train Diaries are now posted on our supplemental web pages. Click on the link and choose Wagon Train Diaries from the menu. Students have spent the last 4 months learning about westward expansion in the mid-19th century while making an imaginary journey to Oregon. They each kept up a diary that recorded the day's events, including important decisions relating to trail choices, problems that needed solving, and more. The journey was difficult and dangerous. They had to deal with floods, deserts, hostile people, sickness, accidents, and death. They had good times as well, but the challenges were enormous. In the end, thanks to some good luck and good decision-making, both teams got through the final high mountain pass and arrived safely at Hacker's Valley. Brief sections of their journals can be found by clicking on the link above.

Our Bamboo Forest Poems are available at the document link below. Each poem started out as a descriptive paragraph. Students were encouraged to use some of the "sensory" wordlist they have in their binders. They broke the sentences into lines intended to emphasize parts of the text and to control the pace and focus of the reader. We observed an increased interest in going to the bamboo forest at choice time after we began this project, which spanned several class sessions.