Third graders eagerly stepped off the bus in anticipation of their visit to the Upper School to meet their big friends.
They couldn’t wait to hear the ninth graders read the stories that they worked so hard on together.
This visit marked the culmination of a semester of collaborative story writing in the Elements of Writing class.
The classes co-wrote stories. They produced a variety of stories with themes spanning from dolphins trying to get to the circus, to children stuck in the game of Minecraft, to camping with nine-legged spiders.
A highlight to sharing their stories included a shared pizza lunch.
“I thought it was really relieving to see that we had finally accomplished something with our little buddies.
It was really nice to see the expression on their faces. They just lit up like little light bulbs,” ninth grader Zaira Paredes said.
Both classes had fun with this project and displayed their creativity.
When asked if they would have changed anything, everyone had the same answer: “No.”
Third grader Carter Mikkelsen said, “I would not have changed anything.”
The third graders shared their favorite parts of their stories.
“The story took different turns with different people that I would not expect,” third grader Jacob Molina said.
The writing process itself was a different format from what either group was used to.
“It was story format rather the usual essays, so this was actual plot, scene, story, dialog, the whole enchilada,” freshman Alex Bidwell said.
This writing project is the brainstorm of English teacher Ms. Carol Nordgaarden and third grade teacher Ms. Brooke Cummings ‘97.
It was the first of its kind: “I have been wanting to do a project for years, where the students have more output than just input and just repeating something we have been studying, and I wanted to do something creative, and when Ms. Cummings suggested we work together, when she observed my eighth grade, we thought this would be a great chance to do that.”
After lunch, both classes took a stroll around the campus. They visited the new library and got to see what it might be like to be a student in the upper grades.