Latin School of Chicago

A middle school student writes down clues as she works toward solving a mystery. ¸ share with fourth graders, reading one another's books on Authors Day. They write adventure stories; biographies and autobiographies; fairy tales, folk tales, fantasy stories and legends; poetry; historical fiction; non-fiction; humor and even how-to books. First grade teachers Mary Durkin and Fiona Deeney acknowledge that children come to first grade "often not knowing how to separate words, and so we teach spacing and the reinforcement of conventional spelling in their original writing." First graders learn that sentences need punctuation and capitalization to make them complete, and they begin to differentiate between upper- and lower-case letters. Most children are able to write a logical four-sentence paragraph on a topic by year's end. In fourth grade, Tim Sheehan and his colleagues create the scaffolding for a unique research and writing project as part of their Ancient Egypt unit. The fourthgrade team challenges students to "Imagine what it would be like if you were a pharaoh." Three times a week, the fourth graders participate in a writers workshop that focuses on the project. Sheehan reads aloud a section of a student's work, while the child holds a pen. Says Sheehan: "They start to listen, to hear as editors, and they begin to correct their own work. Hearing their work as someone reads it aloud to them helps them to hear punctuation, grammar and style issues." The fourth-grade team uses the pre-writing, writing, draft, conference/revision, and final draft process. Meanwhile, in social studies class, students create projects that connect with their writing. The completed "My Life as a Pharaoh" project includes illustrations and "artifacts" such as mummies, cartouches and pyramid designs. Nuance, detail and description are part of the process as students write throughout their lower school years, explains division Director Sally Ott. "Planning, processing and using technology are all important elements," Ott explains. Writing in the Middle Early each fall Latin's sixth graders spread around the school investigating crime scenes, hunting for clues and working together to set a scenario as part of the sixth grade mystery unit. This interdisciplinary study teaches students about the scientific method as they learn how to unravel a science mystery, at the same time as they learn about mystery novels in English class. In their language arts class, they actually write mystery stories, focusing on process and plot. ¸ "They start to listen, to hear as editors, and they begin to correct their own work. Hearing their work as someone reads it aloud to them helps them to hear punctuation, grammar and style issues." – Fourth grade teacher Tim Sheehan 22 Latin Magazine

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