Fourth grade writers teamed up with eighth grade physical science students in a character-creation, storytelling, and science collaboration this term. The fourth graders have been working on characterization in Reading with English Department Chair Mary Munkenbeck, exploring how authors communicate a character’s traits through dialogue, action, and description. 

 

In writing, students have been working on personal narrative, focusing on sequencing, organization, and transitioning from one idea to the next. So, when Upper School science teacher Aimee Slatkavitz approached Mary to see if her students would like to create the characters and write the stories for the eighth grade Motion Graph Project, Mary felt the project was a perfect fit. “I knew it would be a great enrichment activity that would tap into all the skills they are working on.”  

Any jitters that the fourth graders felt on meeting their eighth grade partners for the first time dissipated quickly. After a quick recap of the project, fourth graders paired up with their eighth grade partners and spent a class period getting to know one another. They took turns navigating across a game board where they shared fun facts about themselves, such as whether they have seen a movie this month, like sour candy, or are afraid of snakes. The eighth graders were so friendly and welcoming that by the end of the first class, shy giggles and one-word responses had been replaced by lively chatter and laughter. The fourth graders started referring to their partners as their “eighth grade buddies.”

After the initial meeting, the buddies convened again to co-create their story character. They chose a name for their character, discussed their likes and dislikes, and identified internal character traits like intelligence and kindness and external characteristics like height and appearance. The Motion Graph Project requires eighth graders to graph the distance, speed, and time it takes the character to travel to four different locations and back again by the end of a story. They decided on the locations that the character would visit in the story and the sequence. Once these key story elements had been agreed on, the fourth grade writers went to work.

Mary modeled the project for her students, creating her own character and story and showing how all the pieces of the project would come together. Using a planner, the fourth graders documented the essential information their eighth grade partners needed in the story, pairing each location with a reasonable value for the distance, speed, and time to travel. Students wrote two possible ledes for the story that would grab the reader’s attention. Then they broke their story into chunks, writing a paragraph for each location. Mary showed them how to write the distance sentences that the eighth graders would need, and then they combined all the pieces into a finished story to share with the eighth graders. The novelty of writing a story for another student was exciting, says Mary. “Knowing that their story was going somewhere and that someone was going to use it to learn and create something was a huge motivating factor!” 

While the fourth graders were writing, the eighth graders were learning how to do the graphing and calculations necessary to put the project together. The eighth graders created posters depicting the characters, aspects of the story, a visual number line showing the character’s movement, a position vs. time graph, and a velocity vs. time graph to mirror the character’s movements. The fourth graders were excited to see their writing transformed into the eighth grade projects when they visited before Thanksgiving Break. When Bryce ’30 and Diego ’26 gathered around their project, it was clear that the process had been just as enjoyable for the older students. “I wanted to see how a fourth grader would make and interpret a story,” says Diego. “It was great to collaborate with Bryce because what he gives me is always going to be creative.” Mary and Aimee agree that the older and younger students connected so well that they want to look for future opportunities to collaborate again. As Aimee notes, “It was wonderful to see our students engaged in such a joyful process!”