A Penny for Some Thoughts About Pennies

In sixth grade we have the joy of starting to learn about argument essays. They've done persuasive essays before, but now it's argumentative...meaning they have to read articles and back up their opinion with facts. Ha. Let me tell you how NOT fun that is to teach.

So anyways, back in March I gave a writing assignment based on a couple articles about reasons why the U.S. is debating getting rid of the penny. Obvious assignment: Should the U.S. keep the penny, or stop circulation?

I was reading through them tonight (don't worry about the fact that it's 3 months after I gave the assignment that I'm finally grading them...grading is probably worse than making seating charts, and grading essays is the worst that there is) and I ran across one that made me stop and think. This kid's right. Even though the essay itself isn't quite up to par, he's got some good points I want to share:

• "Another reason I think they should get rid of [pennies] is because you can't really buy like a bike with all pennies." 
• "Most of the time you find a penny you pick it up or just walk past it but if you see a dollar bill you are going to defiantly pick it up and be happy." (Autocorrect changed his misformed spelling of definitely into defiantly, but I think I like the edit better than the originally intended word.)
• "The penny is so little and dirty all the time I think they proudly should clean them better."
• "Just think if there was only pennies and no dollar bills that would be hard to count because if you mess up you have to start over."

Alright, I'm convinced. Get rid of the penny, America. Or at least proudly clean them better, sheesh.



Ok, I've got more. These are from various students.

• "The penny is important just like education." (New favorite student.)


• "Pennies are useless there only point is to get lost in your purse and to throw around and spin on the table probly loose them and then find it and forget about it." (So true.)
• "A nickel cost 7.7 cents to make. That's messed up it cost more to make a nickel than it's actually worth. It cost two cents to make a one cent coin that's messed up like really it cost more to make than its worth." (Yes, it's all so messed up.)
• "Aberham Lincon is on the penny no one want to get rid of him he is awesome. If we get ride of Aberham Lincon no one os going to remember him duh!!" (Couldn't have said it better myself.)