Seventh-graders help write letters to Santa
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE — Postal employees at the North Pole will be busy in the next couple of days delivering letters that were written for local kindergartners to Santa Claus.
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
WRITE THAT DOWN — Helping kindergartner Evan Chapman write a letter to Santa Claus are, from left: Presque Isle Middle School seventh-graders Grant Stewart and Bradley Kinney. For the second consecutive year, seventh-graders in Elaine Hendrickson’s English classes at PIMS helped pen the letters for Angel Casavant’s kindergarten classes at Pine Street Elementary School.
On Monday — for the second consecutive year — seventh-graders in Elaine Hendrickson’s English class at Presque Isle Middle School helped pen the letters for children in Angel Casavant’s kindergarten classes at Pine Street Elementary School.
The morning kindergarten class met their middle school buddies in the PIMS library, while the afternoon students hosted the seventh-graders at Pine Street.
“My students love the individual attention that one teacher can’t give them, and they love seeing the words that they’re saying being put down on paper. For them it’s immediate gratification,” said Casavant. “Before coming to Pine Street, I taught at the middle school so it’s nice to come back. One of my students said on the way in, ‘It looks like we’re going into a castle.’
“Both Mrs. Hendrickson and I love the project, and we both feel our students get a lot out of it and hope to continue doing it in the future,” she said.
Hendrickson agreed.
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
CALIE SOUCIE, left, a seventh-grader at Presque Isle Middle School, reviews kindergartner Kristen Graves’ Christmas wish list before including those items in a formal letter to jolly, old St. Nick during a letter-writing activity held Monday between students in Elaine Hendrickson’s class at PIMS and Angel Casavant’s class at Pine Street Elementary School.
“I just feel it’s a very good experience for both groups — for my seventh-graders and for the kindergarten children,” she said. “It gives my students an opportunity to practice their writing skills, plus its kind of a community service project … to write letters to Santa.”
The seventh-graders would write down what the children wanted for Christmas on a separate list, and then included those items in a formal letter to jolly, old St. Nick.
“They follow the friendly-letter format so they had to have the date, ‘Dear Santa,’ two paragraphs — the first what the child would like for Christmas and the second paragraph was if they were good or bad, and what they would like to leave for the reindeer, and the letter also had a closing and the child’s signature,” said Hendrickson. “If they finished early, my students would read a Christmas book to their kindergartner which helped practice their reading skills. It’s nice to see some of my quieter students come to the front and help another student.”
Staff photo/Scott Mitchell Johnson
SHAWN HEBERT, a kindergartner at Pine Street Elementary School, enjoys a cupcake while being read to by Emma O’Connell, a seventh-grader at Presque Isle Middle School. Earlier O’Connell helped Hebert write a letter to Santa Claus as part of a collaborative project between the two grades.
Seventh-graders Zach Lawrence and R-Jay Jackson enjoyed their letter-writing experience.
“It was entertaining getting to meet a new person,” said Lawrence. “I have a brother who’s two years younger than me, but no sibling as young as a kindergartner. He was quieter than I thought he’d be, but it was fun.”
“I think it was fun because I don’t get to see little people a lot because I’m in middle school and there aren’t any here,” Jackson said. “When we were done our kindergartner colored a Christmas SpongeBob picture that I printed out. Hopefully they liked doing this project and will continue to believe in Santa.”
