The high school kids were members of the college-level public speaking class taught by Tanya Miller. The middle schoolers were students in Joe Grimes’ language arts class. Between them, they met with all six second-grade classes Thursday and Friday at Century School.
Mixed-age groups formed to read the picture book “A Map Into the World” by Hmong-American author Kao Kalia Yang, who will be visiting the local schools on March 17. The book depicts a family moving into a new house and hanging a “story cloth” on the wall, along with other Hmong cultural practices and events in their family and community.
Yang’s visit is funded by an innovation grant from the Minnesota Humanities Center. In her application for the grant, Century Elementary School literacy coach Jill Stevenson wrote, “Our big idea is to embrace diversity. We wish to broaden our students’ perspectives by helping them gain an even deeper understanding of and respect for different races and ethnicities.
“Our wish is to have our students directly interact with an author, and engage with literature representative of the Hmong-American culture. In the upper grades, teachers will amplify or expand on student learning about immigrants and refugees.”
Miller explained what she hoped her speech students would gain from the experience.
“This is the first week of their class, and so it’s a really nice introductory thing to do,” she said. “It’s not too intimidating for them to have a speaking opportunity in front of children. And it puts them in a sort of a position of authority, which is good for them. And it’s good for the (second graders), too, to see the role models that they look up to.”
“I think that any time we can connect the high school to the elementary school is always a really positive thing,” said Rebecca Grant, whose second grade class Miller’s students visited on Thursday. “It gives my second graders role models who can show them fluency while they’re reading. Also, a different voice reading to them is always nice. This book, in particular, gives them access to a Minnesota author, as well as what we call ‘a window’ into a different culture.”
Meantime, Kelsie Undem’s second graders paired off one-on-one with members of Grimes’ middle school English class. She noted they’ll be working together later this year on another book-related project.
“They are going to come and interview my students,” Undem said of Grimes’ group. “They just talk and get to know each other. ... To just see the minds of a middle schooler to really connect with my second graders is such a cool thing to see. And then, they take what they gathered in just 10, 15 minutes and come up with this whole story.”
In other words, each of Grimes’ students pairs up with one of Undem’s kids and custom-writes a children’s book “where that kid is the hero/main character of that story,” said Grimes. “I’ve done it for, like, 15 years now.”
For example, he said, “One of the girls I have (in class) now has a story that one of the seniors wrote for her, that she still has.”
Recalling a similar collaboration between her students and Grimes’ class last year, Undem added, “We read them all to the class, and they’re like, ‘Oh, read mine! Read mine!’ They get really engaged.”
Undem noted that not all of Century’s second grade classes experience this collaboration with the middle school creative writers. “It’s something special,” she said, adding that while the middle school and elementary are under one roof, they are usually very separate. “It’s really nice to bridge that gap, to be all together,” said Undem.
As for what he hopes his students will get out of the project, Grimes said, “One of the main things is, as a writer, putting yourself from the reader’s point of view. So, we’ve got to tailor our story to make it appropriate, age-level-wise, and whatever that kids’ reading level is. The number 1 focus is writing for our reader.”
Grimes said this one assignment encompasses a lot of skills and standards. “It’s a big project,” he said. “It takes a lot of work. And we’re doing something different this year: we’re going to have some of the seniors be our editors. They’re going to be part of the process, too.”
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March 07, 2020 at 09:06PM
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Reading and writing projects bring age groups together - Park Rapids Enterprise
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