Welcome to Acorn Stories 2020! Each year, the Live Oak faculty present various writing genres of writing to their students: fiction, poetry and prose, research papers, historical fiction, personal narratives, and one-of-a-kind Personified Vocabulary Word Stories! The faculty guide them through the writing process, sharing with them examples as well as walking them through each of the steps. This edition includes pieces written before and during School from Home, which illustrates the continuous efforts of our faculty to nurture a love of and appreciation for writing within our classroom communities. Acorn Stories 2020 provide our students with an opportunity to say, “I’m a published author,” as they share these writings with the extended school community. Within this online edition, they will show you their understanding of a particular genre, while giving you insights into their thoughts and personalities. We want to thank all of our lower school faculty and middle school humanities teachers for supporting and nurturing Live Oak students, giving them the tools to articulate a vision and share ideas through writing. And thank you to Savannah Guinn, Admissions Associate, for all of her work uploading documents and scanning files. And thank you to Live Oak parents who helped edit student work. This summer, we hope you have the chance to sit back and enjoy the writing.
Roslyn Benjamin, Assistant Head of School
Emma Peat, Middle School Head
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Kindergarten North and South
Kindergarteners come to school with incredible story-telling abilities. Each of their perspectives is uniquely based on their experiences and understandings of the world at a point in time. All year long they fill their personal journals with dictated stories, often recorded by parent volunteers. Students share the events and ideas that are meaningful to them and that represent the present moment for them. Magical powers, mystical creatures, and unicorns are the topics for some, while others focus on real-life events like family trips or holiday celebrations. The children see their stories recorded, hear them read back, and illustrate them. As the year progresses, they begin to add more letters, words, or sentences to the dictated text, and some students write their own entries. Years from now these journal stories will become remarkable time machines. The older children or adults who read them will get a glimpse into the world of their five and six-year-old selves. Kindergarten students continued journal work while sheltered at home, adding another layer to their perspectives. The stories here were selected by the students during School From Home.
First Grade East
This winter, the students in First Grade East studied fiction stories. Using a mix of imaginative and realistic elements, they wrote their own pieces, both in the realistic fiction and creative fiction genres. In their work, they implemented the use of a story map by first creating characters for their readers to get to know. Then, these characters went off on adventures and encountered a problem, and by the end, found a resolution. Children also illustrated their books and shared them with the class.
First Grade West
First graders sprung into spring by exploring poetry. They listened to the rhymes, rhythms, and repetition of short poems. They read poems written in different forms. Once they had read a variety of poems, it was the first graders’ turn to try their hand at creating poems. At the end of our unit, students picked their favorite poem to share with all of you!
Second Grade East and West
Second graders were immersed in poetry this winter and spring. As they read different kinds of poems, second-grade writers learned how poets stir strong feelings and create lasting images. Second graders learned to write with an ear, using line breaks to control the pace and rhythm of words and to create special effects on the page. They learned to experiment with language, word choice, and comparisons–craft techniques they can apply to other genres of writing. Poetry helped our students open their eyes to the beauty of the earth, cultivate a belief in the power of language, and begin to understand the truths inside them.
Third Grade East
In the Third Grade East classroom, students embarked on a research project about influential women of color, reading and writing about those who have made strides toward gender equality. They used narrative nonfiction, expository texts, and online sources to gather information about these women. They researched with these two questions in mind:
- How have women fought against gender (and race) inequality to make change?
- How can their example influence others to fight for equality?
Please read and enjoy their books!
Third Grade West
In Third Grade West, we transformed into poets by learning how to look at something ordinary and turn it into something extraordinary- we call this method using a poet’s eye. We practiced using our poet’s eye by first looking at an ordinary object in a new way. A crystal became a rocket, an acorn a baby, a foxtail into a flag. We used these observations to create a poem. We quickly realized that in life, poet’s write about something that is more meaningful than an object. We connected moments from our lives that mattered to us as we incorporated the five senses into our poems. You will notice that each poem uses a poet’s eye, has meaningful line breaks that pause for dramatics, a rhythm or beat, and the five senses that help make each poem come alive. We hope you enjoy reading a small, but powerful moment in our lives that we have decided to share with you!
Fourth Grade East and West
In Fourth Grade, students participated in many writing units over the course of the school year: personal narratives, persuasive essays, informational books, graphic texts, and poetry. During the poetry unit, the fourth graders also worked in their art and library classes to create haiku art projects. Students chose which piece from this year they wanted to be included in Acorn Stories. As you can see, they experimented with many different writing techniques and strategies, using each one to try to express themselves more fully, play with language, engage with their readers, and enjoy their interactions with the written word. We hope you enjoy reading their work as much as they did creating it!
Fifth Grade East and West
During our expository writing unit, the fifthies learned the structure of a traditional essay, along with a variety of innovative techniques. For our unit mentor texts, we listened to and read many essays by youth and adults from the KQED Perspectives program. We walked to the radio and television studios of KQED to learn more about how these programs are created. As you read our anthology, be prepared to open your mind and be persuaded by some well-crafted arguments.
Sixth Grade
The Class of 2022 explored many aspects of their emerging identities through writing exercises, class activities, book discussions, and journaling. Each student wrote a poem that invites the reader to take a step into their world, sharing their homes and traditions through sights, sounds, smells, and emotions. These “I Am From” poems allowed students to get to know returning and new members of the community in new ways and to see each other’s unique perspectives. They went through many stages of the writing process, from observing in their thinking journals to brainstorming with webs, from developing rubrics to “brain-dumping,” from writing to rewriting and writing again, to proofreading, self- and peer-editing. We invite you to discover something new about the sixth-grade writers as you dive into their worlds of self, home, and family.
Seventh Grade
Belligerent! Sullen! Ostentatious! Seventh graders wrote stories to bring these and other colorful words to life. After logging the most challenging, interesting words they encountered, each student chose one to feature in a Personified Vocabulary Word Story. Modeled on the 1970s Mr. Men series (Mr. Grumpy, Mr. Worry, etc.), the stories gave students the chance to create new characters (Ms. Copious, Mr. Haggle, etc.) to show the meaning of their word, while using five others. Some students opted to write short fiction in a genre they chose, incorporating six of their best words. No matter which path they took, the end result is a vibrant short story collection that helps to define new words for readers of all ages.
Eighth Grade
In Eighth Grade humanities students studied The Civil War and Reconstruction during the second trimester. Throughout the unit students considered the questions “How do people maintain their humanity?” and “What does war change or accomplish?” At the end of the unit, they wrote historical fiction pieces consisting of a journal entry or letter from the point of view of a civilian or soldier during or right after the war. Each piece considered the unit questions. Please enjoy the eighth graders’ thinking and learning as reflected in the letters and journals.