5th Grade Mentors as Authors: Writing Books for Mentees

If you give a student an opportunity, they can create meaning. 

Borrowing in style and tone from a beloved children's book series based on the original title, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond, the Fifth Grade Communication & Literacy class recently did just that. 

After spending several weeks studying, identifying, parsing out, reconstructing, and crafting their own complex sentences in grammar lessons, they all were given the opportunity to craft a fun children's story for their Kindergarten mentees with the working title, "If you Give an Aspen Student. . ." Students were asked to use at least six complex sentences and create a story in groups that was engaging and would please their eager audience of five-and-six-year-old buddies. The results were hilarious and heartwarming and had them asking to work on a grammar concept! I call that a win!

As a Communication and Literacy teacher. . . (See what I did there with my subordinating conjunction and dependent clause?), the toughest task is always looking for ways to make grammar fun. Additionally, it is important to move from rote identification and memorization to authentic application. Prior to beginning this project, students studied copies of Bond and Numeroff's books. We had our own read aloud of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and discussed its structure and how complex sentences worked to create the cause and effect situations the mouse finds himself in. The remnants of the project also began showing up in lessons on using transitional words and phrases to show cause an effect while writing Research Essays and other instances in which we spotted "AAAWWUBBIS" words "in the wild". 

This past Friday, the stories were met with exuberance and love during our Mentor/Mentee time. It's amazing to see the middle schoolers' work through gleaming little eyes, and I hope the fifth graders saw, in those moments, what grammar can mean (and what it can do). 

Here's one of the final products if you'd like to read on of the books!

For more on Middle School at Aspen Academy, click here.