A group of Triton’s high school students are currently in the process of writing fairy tales and folktales for second graders at Salisbury Elementary. Each student was given the name of a second grader to write a story for, and they will read and give it to them to keep when the high schoolers visit them in a month or so after they have completed their books.

“I think that kids in high school become very echocentric and I think sometimes kids forget that there’s people outside of themselves, outside of Triton High School, outside of there little neighborhoods, that there’s other people that we can do nice things for. So while they are learning fairy tales and folktales, we are writing the stories, so by the time they’re done with their unit over there, we’ll go over and read our fairy tales to them and give it to them,” says Kimberly Spinale, teacher at Triton High School incharge of this reading buddy field trip.

Other than a journalism class, like here at Triton, there aren’t many opportunities for students writing to be published. Spinale has given students the opportunity for this. Publishing is actually a Common Core standard that students should understand and demonstrate published writing.

The Common Core standards for ELA grades 11-12 for publishing work states, “Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.”

According to Charles Whitaker, who wrote “Best Practices in Teaching Writing”, students who practice authentic writing and publishing recognize that they are writing for an authentic purpose- not just for a school assignment- and they will likely be more engaged as writers.

“Whenever possible, teachers should provide opportunities for publishing- posting student work on the wall, sharing finished writing with the class, mailing letters to intended audiences, doing presentations for younger students or for parents and families, creating a class publication, posting writing on the Web, etc. One additional benefit of publishing is that it gives students a meaningful reason for revising and for editing for correctness,” wrote Whitaker.

“This is a nice community engagement piece where the high school is working with Salisbury Elementary and we have this indistrict collaborative project that’s kind of cool and so it’s giving back, it’s being kind, it’s doing for somebody else. I think it’s good for kids to learn how to do that, and in this case we’re teaching the kids how to collaborate, how to be kind, how to give back,” says Spaneli.

Triton students are in the process of writing these books and although they are free to write about what they want and set up their book the way they want, there are a couple guidelines. The books must have a moral or a lesson, this corresponds to the curriculum the second graders are learning about since they are reading fables. Their book should also have a minimum of 20 pages and a maximum of 100. Since the students are writing these books for the second graders to keep the books they should also keep in mind it should incorporate a story they think he/she would like.

Triton Voice sat down with some of the students writing these stories to see where their at in the process:

“Right now, I’m just stuck on what to write my story on. This is going to be a book that the kids will have forever, so I want it to be a good story and on something they like, but it’s hard because I only know her name,” says junior Jasmine Mohit.

“I’ve never written an actual book before so I’ve had a lot of trial and errors. I have come up with a few ideas on what to write about but it’s hard to keep going with the story. Lets just say it’s a work in process,” says junior Sam Rennick.

Since Mohit and Rennick weren’t the only two having trouble on what to write about, Spaneli gave them some key advice:

“It doesn’t matter what you write it about, it’s the point that you are going to him or her and doing something so kind and so generous that your reading this story and giving them the book that he/she is just gonna melt. It doesn’t matter what the book says it’s really just this treasure that they will forever remember so whenever they see this book they will always think of you,” says Spaneli.