During our study of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried and the Grade 11 essential question, "What the relationship between the self and a changing world?" we wanted our students to consider how they may have changed since entering high school. As such, each G11 student was paired with a new G9 student. The G11s were charged with interviewing their underclassmen for a story that would prove interesting to a larger audience.

The project grew out of many discussions with returning SLA students who admitted not having a chance to get to know the new 9th graders. Academically, it was aimed at having students see how truth was formed in O'Brien's text and where the gray line was for their own interviews.

This unit focused on inductive and deductive reasoning.  Students
were answering delving in to logical arguments and how to form them. 
This unit was a great introduction to writing formal proofs by starting
with logic puzzles and games.  Students completed a benchmark project
to complete this unit.  Their projects included writing 3 types of
puzzles, a color-square puzzle, a crossword puzzle and a puzzle of
their choice.  Then the students exchanged puzzles and solved their
partner's puzzles.  The student who was solving the puzzles had to use
syllogisms and conditional statements to prove the solution.  Their
written proofs were submitted with their puzzles in a portfolio format.