SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. -- Nine local elementary school students from grades 3-5 were recognized in a Tall Tales Writing Contest run by teacher education students at Lake Superior State University recently.
The LSSU students, who were enrolled in a language arts education course taught by Prof. Mary McMyne, considered more than 100 entries received from young authors throughout the Eastern Upper Peninsula and Sault, Ont. The students’ winning tales were published by LSSU in a limited edition anthology, McMyne said. Participating schools included Brimley, Lincoln, Soo Township and Pickford, and R.M. Moore in Sault, Ont.
McMyne said winners and runners-up were honored at an awards ceremony at the Superior Children’s Book Festival last semester, sponsored by the LSSU departments of Education and the English. Winning young writers received gift certificates to local bookstores.
Local elementary students who participated in a tall tales writing contest pose with
LSSU education students and Prof. Mary McMyne.
The contest was part of a service-learning project in which teacher education students designed a lesson plan that called for third, fourth, and fifth graders to write tall tales. The LSSU students judged the contest using a rubric they created based on Common Core Standards, and then worked together to edit the winning entries and design the anthology.
Several local teachers expressed enthusiasm for the project. Karyn Hutchinson, a teacher at the Sault Schools’ Lincoln Elementary, said her students were “really excited about it…It was just what we needed to get them motivated!”
Winning student writers and runners-up were as follows:
Bonnie Li from Ms. Wolski’s class, Soo Township for “Samuel and the Magic Paintbrush”
Hannah Coneset, Ms. Wolski’s class, Soo Township, “Casper the Elephant vs. Spar the Cheetah”
Ayla Kilponen, Ms. Hutchinson’s class, Lincoln Elementary, for “The Doomsday”
Kendra Blair from Ms. Gibbons’ class, Soo Township, for “The Rhyming Manes”
Delaney Cushman, Ms. Gibbons’ class, for “The Baby Named Amy”
Alana VanDerMeer, Ms. Jones’ class at Brimley, for “Launched by the Laundry Chute”
Adam Shubel, Ms. Verstrate’s class, Brimley, for “The Red Giant and the Mountain”
Betty Kovas, Ms. Verstrate’s class, Brimley, for “The Mer-Mountaintop Secret”
Kaleb Radle, from Ms. Bell’s class, Pickford, for “Erik Has No Friends”
CONTACT: Tom Pink, 906-635-2315, email@example.com; John Shibley, 635-2314, firstname.lastname@example.org; Prof. Mary McMyne, 635-2327, email@example.com