January 25, 2013

Words Make Waves: 6th Graders write about social issues

On Thursday afternoon, 6th graders held performed a reading for the 4th grade class to celebrate the completion of their short stories. Students crafted their stories so that characters’ problems, reactions, and the resolution of the story connected to a social issue of importance to them. They set goals and timetables for themselves and looked to mentor authors, narrative writing strategies, and feedback from one another to bring depth and substance to their writing.

 

6th writing Students were proud to share their pieces. They read with conviction about a variety of challenging social emotional topics, such as bullying, coping with family hardship, and overcoming obstacles.  It was amazing to see the range of ideas that they were interested in teaching others about–they knew that the 4th graders would be their audience, so they were writing with a real sense of purpose.

 

Ms. Perkins called the assignment a complete success: “After working with personal narrative for the first couple of months of school, it was fun to do some fiction with them: they seemed to use stronger voices through fictitious characters, which often seemed even more personal than the personal narratives.”

 

Students also gave each other thoughtful feedback on notecards which they enclosed in envelopes to keep and remember their time in this literary community.

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