Boise, ID (CBS 2) — "It has made a crazy difference in their writing," says Mrs. Jessen. "It's phonics, it has phonics stories but it's stories for kids that help them relate to friends. So everything is based on friendship and superheroes which these six-year-olds love."
Here in Mrs. Jessen's first-grade classroom, learning to read and write starts with a story.
A secret story.
"I started with the vowels because we have short vowels and long vowels," explains Mrs. Jessen.
"Superheroes which are the long vowels and then the short vowels. They were really struggling with E's and I's which is where I started. So they have their superheroes which they can totally relate to because they love superheroes."
Each of these slides tells a different story, giving the students a chance to learn a story about the letter, and why it sounds the way it does.
Whether it's present tense, past tense or future tense.
In order to get the supplies for her secret stories lesson,
Mrs. Jessen applied for a classroom grant through DonorsChoose, an organization where community members can help pay for classroom projects like this.
"We went from 19 kids asking me to spell a word, to being able to write paragraphs in full." explains Mrs. Jessen. "They went from writing half a sentence to writing full pages."
Full pages that overflow with some of the first stories these first graders will ever pen and the excitement is infectious.
"It's made a huge difference for them in their confidence and just in their ability," says Mrs. Jessen.
"I can say okay think of what's the secret story for this, and they say oh yeah it's this one and if there are two of them they might not get it right every time, but they get a general idea and that is huge."
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