By: Kayla Howe

Jeff Patton’s senior Government/Economics classes just finished writing a letter to any one of our three Congressmen. In the prompt, Patton provided his students with a fictional amendment. The students were to decide and convince one of the congressmen to vote for or against the amendment. The amendment concerned punishments for all violent crimes. It would be a letter that would not be sent. By using a stack of information that Patton printed off from the internet, and also from the American Government textbook, this was to teach about the government and civil liberties – rights of an accused person. The rubric was based on order, organization, vocabulary, creativity, and took three days to complete. As a result, the final product had to be two pages hand-written. Patton says that several letters were excellent and that the class will continue to do more writings. The goal will be to show improvement with each additional project. "Incorporating writing is varied way to teach the class important lessons," Patton concluded.