To help encourage the love of reading, Grade 8 students at Kilbride Public School in Burlington helped younger students co-write books that will be available in the school library for reading.
This peer-to-peer initiative involved Grade 8 students assisting Grade 1 and 2 students over the course of several weeks in writing their books and illustrating them. Parents/guardians of all students were invited to an official ceremony last week to celebrate the collaboration and achievement gained through this initiative. A total of 25 books were created.
Jeff Belford, a teacher at Kilbride PS who led this project, was thrilled with the outcome of the novels.
“This was a joint venture between intermediate and primary students, to collaboratively brainstorm, plan, write and illustrate children's stories in the hope to help educate and motivate all students to read,” he says. “It was so amazing, and we were all so happy with the finished products. The students were really impressed with what they created.”
Samara, in Grade 7, co-wrote Blake and the Case of the Stolen Jewels, which is about a superhero chasing down a jewel thief.
“The moral of the story is to always be kind,” she says, noting she took her role seriously as a mentor to her writing buddy. “It was really cool seeing his ideas.”
