{"id":10708,"date":"2023-02-09T16:06:23","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T21:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=10708"},"modified":"2023-02-09T16:33:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-09T21:33:06","slug":"a-monster-of-a-good-time-elementary-middle-and-high-school-students-bring-cuddly-characters-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/a-monster-of-a-good-time-elementary-middle-and-high-school-students-bring-cuddly-characters-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A monster of a good time- Elementary, middle and high school students bring cuddly characters to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2013by David Schleck<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Every second grader inside Three Oaks Elementary\u2019s library has a bag in front of them, and every bag has a special creature inside, a product of their imagination.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Three Oaks Elementary student Javier Ruizsantos with Larkspur Middle student Hope McLain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited to see what my monster looks like,\u201d Nathan Chadwick said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMe, too,\u201d Javier Ruizsantos said.<\/p>\n

Months ago these students drew pictures of a make believe character during art class. They gave their monster a name, a favorite food and habitat, and then sent the information to Independent Living students at Renaissance Academy. The high-schoolers honed their sewing skills to create huggable stuffies based on the younger children\u2019s descriptions. And students at Larkspur Middle School wrote adventure stories for each monster.<\/p>\n

The three groups of students recently met at Three Oaks to \u00a0celebrate their creations. Each monster was placed inside a gift bag, along with the monster\u2019s story and other goodies.<\/p>\n

Renaissance Academy teacher Elaine Lombardi counted down from three, and the elementary students reached into their bags and got their first look at monsters in three dimensions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Maxton Tylke with his monster, Jerry<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They hugged their stuffies, thanked the Renaissance students for their hard work and chatted with the Larkspur students about their monsters\u2019 personalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is awesome!\u201d second-grader Maxton Tylke said, holding his monster \u201cJerry\u201d in his arms.<\/p>\n

Larkspur Middle eighth grader Hope McLain spoke with Javier about his monster\u2019s backstory, which had caves and golden hamburgers and all sorts of twists and turns.<\/p>\n

Larkspur teacher Rachel Smith said the exercise gave her English 8 students a chance to try something different.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey love creative writing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

A grant from the Virginia Beach Education Foundation supported the program. Three Oaks teachers Jodi Strack, Andrea Eisenberger and Deborah<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Larkspur Middle School teacher Rachel Smith shares her students’ monster stories.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fuge gave it rave reviews. Seeing students collaborate across grade levels is very rewarding, Lombardi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want other teachers to know how they can make their lessons come alive in this way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Waverly Tharrington with her monster, Bogey, and Reed Juer with his monster, Skelyghost<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2013by David Schleck Every second grader inside Three Oaks Elementary\u2019s library has a bag in front of them, and every bag has a special creature inside, a product of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":10710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10708"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10724,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10708\/revisions\/10724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}