Upper School English 4 Class Works With Preschool Students to Create Short Stories

The Upper School’s English 4: Short Story class spent one of their final days of the semester sharing their love of storytelling with a younger generation of Tartans.

The students visited Tammy Pipitone’s Preschool class last week to help the younger students create a short story using stickers. Groups of three Upper School students and two Preschool students worked together to pick out stickers and then write an original story related to them. The Upper School students wrote out the story as it was dictated to them by the younger Tartans.

“We hoped that the Preschool students would be excited to see ‘the big kids’ enthusiastic about literacy,” said Upper School English teacher Meredith Schumacher. “It was also great to create a sense of community between our divisions here at St. Margaret’s.”

After the stories were created, the Upper School students read them aloud to the class. There were stories about cars, animals, princesses and the ocean. The preschool students were a bit reserved at first, but quickly warmed up to the Upper School students and enjoyed a fun morning together.

Mrs. Schumacher was hoping the time spent in the Preschool would allow the Upper School students a chance to pass on a love of storytelling while also having the opportunity to mentor and be leaders to the younger members of St. Margaret’s community, who in turn had a chance to spend time with older students up-close as role models.

“My favorite part was being able to interact with not only a different division, but the youngest division,” senior Elika Miller said. “It was really cool that the oldest students at St. Margaret’s were making a difference in the younger students' lives, and knowing how excited they were after writing stories with the seniors put a smile on my face.”