TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Assignment Is Kid Stuff

ADVERTISEMENT

By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 14, 2007

Updated: 11/12/2007 07:11 pm

NINE EAGLES - Karolainy Oliveira had a best friend who got weird when she had to move. Vanessa Rodriguez remembered what it was like to see her friends be able to do things she couldn't. Jakob Klukow had a hard time adjusting to a move.

Marissa Lighty just liked dragons.

The Farnell Middle School eighth-graders took these memories, feelings and favorites, fleshed them out with characters and plots, threw in descriptive terms and silly nonsense words and whipped up worlds colored in pencil and marker.

When they finished, they had written and illustrated children's books on topics that touched on fantasy and reality. Their teacher, John Hoback, used the process as a way to help them understand literature. But the real test came not from his grades but how the stories played to an audience of third-graders.

"Language arts is reading and writing, but it's also speaking and viewing," Hoback said.

The Farnell students finished their books last month and turned them over to Deborah Falcon, who teaches third grade at Bryant Elementary. The children read the books as seriously as they would Maurice Sendak or Dr. Seuss, wrote comments and returned them to the middle school.

"That book was a fabulous book!" one little girl wrote.

"I love all the words!" another added.

Last week, 10 Farnell students visited Falcon's class to read their books aloud and answer the younger children's questions.

The eighth-graders had written about pets, friends, dragons and breakfast foods. Kenya Broadnax, 14, told the third-graders she was eating when she came up with her main character, Stanley, the Brave Little Toaster Strudel.

Although the story sounded funny, it was about people treating others badly because they are different, she said.

"To me, being different is good because you don't want to be like everyone else," she said.

The elementary school children raised their hands to ask the authors about the characters they picked and whether they knew anyone similar in real life. They wanted to know where the names came from, where some characters' parents were and what happened when the story ended. They cheered a battle Marissa's dragon, Lyle, won and imitated its "ook" noises. They groaned when Hien Ho's protagonist had her first kiss.

Valerie Moyers had written about a dog's adventures on Halloween and said she has a dog like the one in the book and that she took him out for Halloween. Laura Brown told the class the meaning behind each name in her book about a girl who finds a humongous pumpkin.

To prepare the authors to return to elementary school, Hoback had his class study children's stories.

Books including "And To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "Where the Wild Things Are" and "The Wolves in the Walls" were piled on a table in his room.

The eighth-graders had dissected those books to find the literary conventions they were studying in class.

Students can grasp complicated terms more easily, Hoback said, if the reading is simpler. They picked out plots, settings, protagonists and antagonists and analyzed what the words were showing and what the art was showing.

Meanwhile, Falcon's class was learning about ways to hook readers, first drafts and that good writing should show, not tell, the readers what happens. She pointed out how the eighth-graders had done it when they read their stories.

"It was cool. I wanted to know what the authors looked like," said 8-year-old Katelyn Rosenblum. "It was sort of neat to know what connections they had."

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT