School Days

As Bianca's gotten older, her classroom really focuses a lot on project-based learning. It's everything from learning how to write a compelling history fair project to using research to learn both sides of an argument, in order to debate and retaliate an opponent's argument. At the same time, it seems like since they're in the learning-stages, there's not a lot of follow-through.

In history fair, Bianca made it to the Regionals and got third place. She would have gone to State if she had been a sixth grader, but she's not. So it ended there. A lot of work for what seems like a dead-end.

For debate, everyone had to argue the same confict--Should the state of Utah give incentives for people to buy local produce? Bianca's team was assigned to the affirmative side. On the first night, Bianca and her partner Maren did a pretty well, although Bianca didn't really get the point of the rebuttal on the first round. We had a nice little talk after that and on the next round, she had a much better idea of what her job was. They argued against the other teams in their class as well as teams in the sixth-grade ALPS class. Bianca and her partner were selected to go on to District.

Over the weekend, Bianca had an intensive session with Eric (who was really into debate long, long ago) about how to do rebuttals. At District, Bianca was prepared with all sorts of ammunition. She knew she was prepared and was very confident. They had three rounds, all of which they competed against sixth-grade boys from Jordan Ridge (the other ALPS school in the area). Bianca and Maren were awesome. They couldn't move on to the next level though, as they were fifth-graders. Turns out, they won all three debates. They would have definitely gone on, if they had been allowed. I don't see what the harm is. If they can hold their own with the big boys, why shouldn't they be allowed to move on? A little disappointing, I know, but at least they got their feet wet.