Freshman Honors students get creative to study childhood
Written by Diego Padilla, Former Student on Friday, May 18, 2012
Linda Sparks and her Freshman Honors English class with the help of a second grade class, joined together last Friday to release butterflies that they raised.
It all started when her Freshman English class was finished reading “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a book the Honors English class reads every year. One of the themes in the book is about the loss of childhood, and loss of innocence. During a discussion they talked about things they did as little kids, and not getting to do ever again. Raising butterflies was one of those the things a student mentioned in a discussion. They decided to try it.
Sparks class all thought it was a cool idea. Freshman Brittany Dorsey thought it would be fun to do it and, “Even though they’re older now it was good to get to experience something they did when they were little.”
Sparks, an ex-kindergarten teacher, had done this every year with her kindergarten class. She thought it would go well with her Freshmen and that they would enjoy it. Some of the Freshmen have never seen caterpillars go through metamorphoses so it was very exciting for some of them. Her class ordered caterpillars a week after Spring Break, and went through the beginning of May.
It was a great experience that both high school students and second grade class. Sparks said, “It was exiting having little kids writing letters to them, because it was important to them to be grammatically correct with good grammar, because sometimes they turn things in that aren’t necessarily have much importance on that but when it was sent to an audience, they wanted it to be right.” The second graders also enjoyed it. Sparks said that “the part they enjoyed the most was writing the letters and sending drawings to the high scholar.”
The second graders, experienced butterfly raiser, told them in their letters how to take care of the butterflies. And how when they did their project they gave the butterflies interesting names like, “Small Chainsaw.” Sparks said many of the little kids thought “It very exciting cool to write to high schools.”
Sparks and her students were very happy with the outcome and she hopes to do it for next year and the students think it would be a great idea to continue to do it for freshman honors English. Brittany said “Yes, one hundred percent to do this next year it was very fun.”
Though they missed the hatching of the butterflies they hope that maybe next time they can set up a webcam to see them hatch.
Freshman honors students are still in communication with their second graders, and hope to continue communication throughout the rest of the year.
