Science and Technology!

The theme of this week is science and technology. Our class has been focusing on climate change, green technology, and renewable energy. So far this week we've reflected on our use of technology in daily life, read an article about rising CO2 levels, reported on current events related to climate change, and written a persuasive essay on a topic related to technology use. Check my students' blogs tonight for the final drafts of their essays. They've been through at least four or five drafts and look pretty polished.

We've also spent some time reading science fiction stories. We read Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian" and talked about Bradbury's vision of 2053 written in 1950. We'll also be reading Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains" about the aftermath of nuclear war. The students read Sara Teasdale's poem of the same title in preparation for reading the story. Check out Andreana's thoughtful response to the poem:

"In my opinion this is a very sad poem, but there are some sentences that I like very much like the first one: "There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground". This poem talks about the life on the Earth without humans; I think that this will be better for the nature and for animals because there will be less pollution and so animals can smell better the ground and the fresh air. Another sentence that struck me very much is: "And not one will know of the world". I think that this sentence has many different meaning. Is both sad and full of happiness because there won't be no more wars, but is sad because there won't be humans and so we will disappear. 
This poem makes me feel weird because for me is a sad story, but sometimes there are sentences that said wonderful things. So I think that is a very strange poem, but represents also the persons who wrote it."