The majority of today's class period was spent on Opinion Piece #6. This piece dealt with the issue of religion in schools. We had a deep discussion about the legality of allowing certain elements of religion to exist in schools and denying others. Several of you brought to light the religious nature of our national songs and the Pledge that students are expected to recite daily. We contrasted these messages against recent cases where students have been banned from wearing religious symbols and/or expressing religious beliefs.
I was pleased at how seriously you worked toward completing your Opinion Pieces. You all took obvious time and care with these pieces. I can't wait to correct them! (These Opinion Pieces will count as a formal assessment for quarter 1, so they will need to demonstrate all of the tried and true techniques you've collected from writing the five previous Opinion Pieces.)
After this, we started to complete our timeline of the events leading up to the Salem Witch Trials. We're about to move from one corrupt government in Animal Farm to another. Both are historical allegories, but this is much more realistic in that the characters are real people and many of the events described in the play actually happened. It will be interesting to see if we can find any Napoleons among the residents of Salem.
