This semester in the School of Education, I've been focusing on Technology, Social Studies, and Language Arts. In my Language Arts class, we've discussed how to correctly hold a guided reading group, literacy centers, and writing lessons. The students I have seen write in my second grade classroom have really impressed me with what they can do and how much they have grown. Jo McLeay's blog called The Open Classroom has a blog entry entitled Powerful Writing that shares similiar feelings about one of her students writing but through a blog. http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/ Ms. McLeay discusses a particular time when one of her students had started a discussion about the athletes from Sierra Leone who had gone missing from Melbourne during the Commonwealth Games. (Ms. McLeay teaches in Australia) Ms. McLeay described her student as passionate and engaging. She said it started a big discussion about the living conditions of Sierra Leone. She also included part of Zoe's blog, which would be the powerful writing she was referring to in her title. Zoe was not only passionate, she was moving, it was like she really wanted to help. And she did. Along with her classmates, they raised $200 in one lunch period for Sierra Leone. This blog shows a great point about our students that we often overlook. They are more insightful than we think. We don't give them nearly enough credit for their own original ideas and thoughts. From just watching a video, one idea was started that snowballed into this amazing discussion, passionate writing, and even a fundraiser.