If I could change one thing in the world, I would change … because …

I haven't posted anything about school lately, so I thought I'd share some of my students' thinking.

On Fridays we have a 40 minute time slot called Journal Writing. During that time we sometimes work on completing unfinished writing tasks and other times I ask students to reflect on their learning. Sometimes I'll give a "big question" for them to respond to. Last Friday, after the students had finished writing their "procedures", I asked them to complete two sentences, and then write a story about what the world would be like if they changed that one thing. Today I read their responses and thought I'd share them with you.

Some interesting points:

• For 9 - 10 year olds, one thing can be a very big thing.
• While some of the responses were similar, the writing was unique.
• Many of the students were able to look outside themselves at the world as a whole, while a few were more self-focused. This is neat because it shows that we are making progress toward our school-wide goal of growing great thinkers.

So here is how they completed the sentences (compressed into a single sentence but without any other editing):

 

I would change the people will be kind to each other in this world because there are not many kind people in this world.

I would change people would be nice and be helpful to each other. I would change this because I want people to be happy.

I would change everybody into a happy life. I would change this because some people would have a lot of unhappy life.

I would change that the world was filled with peace and happiness because people all around the world wants happy, and it our duty to make them happy.

I would change that everyone is rich because I don’t want to see people on the street asking for money and the person that ask for money feel shy too.

I would change everyone is not poor because I don’t want all the people poor because when we poor our life is hard to live...

I would change the robbers or thieves. I would change this because I don’t want to see anyone got killed by the thieves or robbers, and I don’t want them to go to jail.

I would change everyone to have many money because I saw the crook steal the people everywhere.

I would change all the bad people like robbers, murderers, and lots more because I don’t want anyone to be robbed or murdered.

I would change how people treat animals. I would change this because I mostly see people treat dog by hitting it.

I would change a rain in foods, a drink, because the homeless people can eat and everyone don’t need to care about no food again.

I would change the environment because it’s good for us and there won’t be a lot of trash.

I would change the environment to be clean no trash and no pollution, because that keep us healthy and make fresh air.

I would change bad water to fresh water because we need fresh water to survive and right now we go only 0.6% of fresh water and everybody was worry that fresh water will disappear.

I would change about garbage and trash. I would change this because every time I ride my bike near the smelly street, it’s so smelly and dirty.

I would change that only Sunday was a weekend. I would change this because when I have tow weekends, I am so bored and there is nothing to do.

I would change so I have super national powers so I could be number hero and luckingest person ever.

I would change cars, so all the people in the world can dive a sport cars and not drive in old cars or small cars also poor people can drive new cars.