One of Jill's assignments this evening was to write an approximately 200-word story. The teacher had a variety of images, and each student got to select one to use as a prompt for his or her story. Jill asked me to help her with her story, but I told her I couldn't, because at the last school meeting, the parents were all told to stop helping their kids so much. Apparently, helpful parents like me were doing too much of the homework and when the students were asked how they got those answers, they couldn't say how. We were told one of the reasons why our children don't receive letter grades is so that they can feel willing to try, because they're not afraid of failure. The teachers would rather our kids fail on their own while trying to solve the problems than to turn in perfect answers without learning how and why those were the right answers.
Sounds reasonable.
Jill compromised and decided that if I couldn't help her write her story (*cough* write her story for her), then the next best thing would be for me to have to do the assignment as well, and then when we had both finished, we would read each other our stories.
Works for me. I'm happy to be a homework buddy.
Without further ado, here is Jill's tale.
It was a unussually sunny day and Lucy woke up got dressed and ate breakfast and got on the bus and went to school and sitting next to her was a little boy. He looked about Lucy's age She, asked him what his name was he replied in a small voice "Charlie" "that is a nice name my name is Lucy" "Oh hi Lucy" he said. "How old are you Charlie?" asked Lucy "Five in a half" said shy Charlie "I am five years old" said Lucy proudly they went on talking and talking until it was time for class first they had maths and then Literacy and then UOI they ate lunch togethar and played togethar and then the kindergardin Bully Max, walked over and grabed the ball that Charlie was throwing to Lucy and said "you cant play with my ball!" and then Lucy stepped up and said "stop bulleing Charlie! and that is not your ball it is the school's ball!" She took the ball from Max and gave it to Charlie when Max had gone Charlie said "thank you for standing up for me." School was over and they went home happy.
The End.
And now here is my story. (I may have gone a teensy weensy bit over the 200 word mark. Jill was practically spot on with her word count. Ha!)
"Get out of the way!" Kiro heard the shout with just enough time to quickly jump aside as a jostling group of running, laughing kids raced through the school courtyard.
Wow, Kiro thought to himself. Those kids look like they're having a lot of fun. They are so busy with their game that they didn't even notice me. Will anyone notice me today?
The bell rang, the courtyard emptied, and Kiro slowly dragged himself behind the crowd, not too eager to experience yet another first day as the new kid in school. He tried to put aside his worries and remember his mom's advice from this morning.
What had she said exactly? Something about smiling. Something very "mom-ish" like "all it takes to make a friend is to smile and be nice!" Kiro exhaled a deep sigh. Mom has lots of experience being new and making friends, but does she really remember what it is like to be in third grade?
He found his room and sat down. The morning passed as a blur of new notebooks, new faces, new rules, new everything. No one had been mean to him, but no one had been especially nice to him either.
After the first round of classes, he found a quiet corner in the cafeteria to relax and slowly eat his home packed lunch—at least something was familiar today.
At recess, he found an empty swing and sat alone. Over on the field, he could see the group of kids from that morning, now playing a game of soccer. Kiro knew how to play soccer. Maybe I could try to join them? He glanced down; he wasn't sure he had enough courage to walk over there and try to get their attention. It would be so awkward. He rubbed his sneakers into the dirt and wished he were at his old school with Heila and Marc. Are Heila and Marc playing tag right now without me?
A shadow fell over his shoes. Getting up, he saw a girl standing right in front of him holding a soccer ball. Do I recognize her from my class? Why is she here? Is she going to say something? She has the soccer ball. Is everyone watching us? Maybe I should . . . he smiled.
Beaming back, she handed him the ball and said, "Hi, I'm Kazumi, but you can call me Zuma. You're Kiro, right?"
He managed to nod a response.
Encouraged, Kazumi continued, "we play soccer every day during recess. Would you like to join us? Anyone who wants to can play."
Kiro nodded again, stammering out a "thank you" this time, and followed her to the field. I guess I can tell Mom at dinner tonight that smiling really does work.
____________
Here is the story prompt Jill selected.
Also, can we take a moment to notice that my American daughter, says "maths" and "literacy" instead of "math" and "language arts"? I kind of love it. (And UOI stands for "Unit of Inquiry," which is what all their learning for each term is based around. All of the other topics they study are supposed to be related to the main theme, building upon each other.) For some reason, I also love that she wrote that Lucy "stepped up" to the bully. And that she had that sweet girl in the picture be the champion who put the bully in his place. Go Jill!
Sounds reasonable.
Jill compromised and decided that if I couldn't help her write her story (*cough* write her story for her), then the next best thing would be for me to have to do the assignment as well, and then when we had both finished, we would read each other our stories.
Works for me. I'm happy to be a homework buddy.
Without further ado, here is Jill's tale.
It was a unussually sunny day and Lucy woke up got dressed and ate breakfast and got on the bus and went to school and sitting next to her was a little boy. He looked about Lucy's age She, asked him what his name was he replied in a small voice "Charlie" "that is a nice name my name is Lucy" "Oh hi Lucy" he said. "How old are you Charlie?" asked Lucy "Five in a half" said shy Charlie "I am five years old" said Lucy proudly they went on talking and talking until it was time for class first they had maths and then Literacy and then UOI they ate lunch togethar and played togethar and then the kindergardin Bully Max, walked over and grabed the ball that Charlie was throwing to Lucy and said "you cant play with my ball!" and then Lucy stepped up and said "stop bulleing Charlie! and that is not your ball it is the school's ball!" She took the ball from Max and gave it to Charlie when Max had gone Charlie said "thank you for standing up for me." School was over and they went home happy.
The End.
And now here is my story. (I may have gone a teensy weensy bit over the 200 word mark. Jill was practically spot on with her word count. Ha!)
"Get out of the way!" Kiro heard the shout with just enough time to quickly jump aside as a jostling group of running, laughing kids raced through the school courtyard.
Wow, Kiro thought to himself. Those kids look like they're having a lot of fun. They are so busy with their game that they didn't even notice me. Will anyone notice me today?
The bell rang, the courtyard emptied, and Kiro slowly dragged himself behind the crowd, not too eager to experience yet another first day as the new kid in school. He tried to put aside his worries and remember his mom's advice from this morning.
What had she said exactly? Something about smiling. Something very "mom-ish" like "all it takes to make a friend is to smile and be nice!" Kiro exhaled a deep sigh. Mom has lots of experience being new and making friends, but does she really remember what it is like to be in third grade?
He found his room and sat down. The morning passed as a blur of new notebooks, new faces, new rules, new everything. No one had been mean to him, but no one had been especially nice to him either.
After the first round of classes, he found a quiet corner in the cafeteria to relax and slowly eat his home packed lunch—at least something was familiar today.
At recess, he found an empty swing and sat alone. Over on the field, he could see the group of kids from that morning, now playing a game of soccer. Kiro knew how to play soccer. Maybe I could try to join them? He glanced down; he wasn't sure he had enough courage to walk over there and try to get their attention. It would be so awkward. He rubbed his sneakers into the dirt and wished he were at his old school with Heila and Marc. Are Heila and Marc playing tag right now without me?
A shadow fell over his shoes. Getting up, he saw a girl standing right in front of him holding a soccer ball. Do I recognize her from my class? Why is she here? Is she going to say something? She has the soccer ball. Is everyone watching us? Maybe I should . . . he smiled.
Beaming back, she handed him the ball and said, "Hi, I'm Kazumi, but you can call me Zuma. You're Kiro, right?"
He managed to nod a response.
Encouraged, Kazumi continued, "we play soccer every day during recess. Would you like to join us? Anyone who wants to can play."
Kiro nodded again, stammering out a "thank you" this time, and followed her to the field. I guess I can tell Mom at dinner tonight that smiling really does work.
____________
Here is the story prompt Jill selected.
Also, can we take a moment to notice that my American daughter, says "maths" and "literacy" instead of "math" and "language arts"? I kind of love it. (And UOI stands for "Unit of Inquiry," which is what all their learning for each term is based around. All of the other topics they study are supposed to be related to the main theme, building upon each other.) For some reason, I also love that she wrote that Lucy "stepped up" to the bully. And that she had that sweet girl in the picture be the champion who put the bully in his place. Go Jill!
Jill's story is so sweet!
ReplyDeleteI tried to log out from dad and back in as me and it erased my comment. Basically I said that I read this a while back in my email on my phone while I was out waiting somewhere and then forgot to comment when I got home. And I said that I loved both your stories. And I mentioned something about how Hallie recently found a bunch of stories I had written at her age and so now she is writing stories in her spare time too, and it makes me happy. Then I remembered that she has always written stories, since she could barely spell, but I guess now she is typing them on the computer, which is fun. But then I realized that with these new stories she doesn't draw pictures for them like she used to, which feels like it means that she has officially grown out of picture books (which she actually probably did a long time ago), and that made me sad. And then I said something really poetic about how bittersweet sometimes tastes a lot more bitter than sweet.
ReplyDelete