Herrick eighth graders in Matt Cunningham’s English-Language Arts class spent time improving their writing and storytelling skills this past school year. This spring, Mr. Cunningham recognized how much his students enjoyed writing and decided to try something a little more creative for their Narrative Final this year – He partnered with Pierce Downer second grade teacher Jamie Lindberg, and assigned his students to write a book specifically for a second grader.
“My eighth graders loved this project,” Mr. Cunningham said. “Them knowing that this assignment was for a second grader in our district made them work extremely hard. Everyday in Language Arts for two weeks my students worked diligently to finish their narratives. At the end of the two weeks, my students asked for more time because they wanted the stories to be perfect and I was happy to give that time to them because the stories they were producing were wonderful.”
When the stories were finished, Mr. Cunningham’s students visited the second graders and shared their stories, to the delight of the younger students.
“It was a lot of fun to see the eighth graders and second graders interacting,” Mr. Cunningham said. “I'm already looking forward to doing this assignment again next year.”