Legislative Draft Project Update-- "Research & Top 10"

Welcome back, after the Labor Day holiday!
I hope everyone had a nice long weekend-- I had a wonderful time visiting Montana!

Last week, I announced the results of the 7th and 8th grade election (for the Legislative Draft project): Environmental Issues won, and by a pretty large margin!

If you look at the "Overview" that I sent out the second week of school, we are still working under the "Before the Draft" section (on the back of the front page). Today in class, we used the laptop cart to do some preliminary research on U.S. states' involvement in environmental issues. We will have one more day of in-class work time to do research; any further research will have to be done on students' own time, outside of school. Remember, the more you research, the better your Top 10 list will be; the better your Top 10 list is, the better chance you have of drafting a successful Legislative Team; the better your Legislative team, the more likely you will be to win the grand prize at the end of the school year!

Here are some examples of really useful websites for doing your research:

http://www.environmentcalifornia.org/

(Notice the "State Legislature" link near the bottom left... ;) )

You can find this same website for almost every U.S. state!

If you can't find this website for the states you want to research, I recommend exploring the state government portal. For example:

http://ncgov.com/

My goal is for us to have completed The Draft by the end of this quarter; that way we can be ready to go when the 2010/2011 legislative sessions begin!

As always, if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to contact me at Paideia.

Thanks and take care,
Leah Hood