If you read my post “A Hashtag You Shouldn’t Ignore”, you’ll understand my passion for sending comments to student blogs when I have the opportunity. Recently, I received an invitation from @ashleyproud to take a look at what his students had been doing. He had written about it on his blog at “I Am One of Those People”. He had been looking for a new way to engage his students in an activity involving persuasive writing. He was trying a rather unique approach by having his students write petitions to try and influence their portion of the world. I was intrigued and went and enjoyed reading some of their works.
You can see his class petitions by following any of these links. Why not, and check out the writing and sign a petition or two?
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall11/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall12/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall1/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall19/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall14/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall15/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall10/
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mcdowall6/
One of the petitions, in particular, caught my fancy. It was about the need to do some improvements to the local dog park. This was of particular interest to me. Every dog that I had ever owned had either been a beagle or daschund and I could tire them out with a short, brisk walk. Recently, though, we adopted a German Shepherd cross and he seems to enjoy as much activity as we can provide. It was also through him that I discovered just what a dog park is. We’re fortunate to have one about 20 minutes away and Jaimie likes going every opportunity that he can get. So, I got a real appreciation for the concept and empathized with Mr. Proud’s student and his desire to change things by completing the dog park in his neighbourhood.
The rest of this post may only be of interest to Mr. Proud’s student so I won’t mind if you don’t finish. What I’d like to do, as promised, is to show some pictures from our dog park. I’m hoping that Mr. Proud passes this link along to his student so that the student can take a look at our park and make suggestions.
First of all, where is it? I know from Twitter that Mr. Proud’s students are working with Google Earth. So, here is a KMZ file so that the student can locate us.
Our dog, Jaimie loves to go to the dog park and run the area. If you look at the park from Google Earth, you’ll see the parking lot, the smaller area for small dogs (and a time out area for big dogs) and the large area for the dogs.
From the parking lot, you can see the forest behind and, of course, the garbage can.
If you look the other way, you can see more of the forest and there’s an open trail for dogs and owners to use.
Here’s the entrance. There are two gates to make it safe to take your dog off leash. There are rules for the park and two containers of plastic bags that owners are expected to use when necessary.
Jaimie took off as soon as we let him off leash. There is a tree in the middle of the park. Also, you’ll see that there’s a bench for people to sit on. In front of the bench, there’s a puddle.
A dog park is a great place for a dog to sniff. Here, Jaimie sniffs outside the smaller area.
On the tree, some owners have hung a tribute to dogs that are no longer dog park users.
Winter just passed and it’s now spring. These trees outside the fence will be nice when they turn green.
And, off in the corner, there’s a picnic table and both dogs and their owners use it as a place to rest.
So, that’s our dog park. Do you have any suggestions for us?
I hope that your petition is successful. Good luck.
That was fun. Why don’t you search for comments4kids and help a colleague out by adding a comment here and there?
