Grade 2 Peer Partnerships Culminate in Stories
COJOWA and Manzanillo students: a powerful peer partnership.
Grade 2 students at the Colegio Jorge Washington (COJOWA) in Cartagena, Colombia recently celebrated stories with peers from a local partner school as a capstone for a peace project for narrative writing. The stories that the COJOWA and local students wrote were powerful, reflecting the deep impact of connecting with others through deep, compassionate listening.
At COJOWA, students experience Service Learning through their social studies and Spanish classes. In second grade this year, students learned about communities in social studies and applied that in Spanish through narrative writing; at the same time, grade 2 teachers and students had decided to take action on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) #11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and #4 (Quality Education).
“In learning about communities, the students were able to see many assets in their community such as a nearby beach, pets, and their own freedom,” says COJOWA Community Engagement Coordinator Jessica Benitez. “We wanted them to get to know peers from a local community, and to see the assets there, too, so we partnered with a school that has been linked to COJOWA for a long time.”
Second grade Spanish teacher Maria Alejandra Mercardo is deeply involved in the Manzanillo del Mar partnership, and has been supporting local teachers there for many years. She goes to the community school every week to offer professional development to local teachers, and to share resources and knowledge about balanced literacy. Other COJOWA teachers and students join her in offering workshops to Manzanillo students, teachers and parents.
“This was an opportunity to connect our second graders,” says Maria. “I was able to work with our students, and with the second grade teacher at Manzanillo, focusing on the same skills and theme. Some of the local students are behind COJOWA students in terms of skill development, so we used different techniques for writing narratives, and we started with sticky notes and lots of drawings to build those skills.”
COJOWA second graders interviewed Manzanillo second graders about their community and went on a walking tour of Manzanillo with their peers as guides. Jessica says this “was the most beautiful part of the project” as COJOWA students got to see the parts of the Manzanillo community that the local students were most proud of, and felt were most beautiful.
Guests from Manzanillo, such as teachers of the public school and staff at Fundación Serena del Mar, also spoke to the second grade classes, and students were able to interact with many people to get a better understanding of the community’s resources.
Then, they started working on creating and writing personal narratives, using the stories they had gleaned about Manzanillo. They worked on sequencing a story, adding details, writing an engaging introduction, and creating a glossary.
Manzanillo students did the same, working on writing stories about their own community, and both groups of students produced stories they could share and celebrate.
“The Manzanillo students came to COJOWA to share their stories, and our students shared theirs, too,” recalls Jessica. “It was such a celebration of community and connection.”
As literacy skills improve at the Manzanillo school, plans are being solidified for next year’s second grade experience. The aim is to have learners in both schools at the same skill level for the learning experience. The stories may be digitized so that they can be shared more widely next year, as well.
“The experience this year was a prototype,” explains Jessica. “It was so successful and it’s wonderful for the second graders to connect with the Manzanillo community, because there will be many opportunities for them to interact with community members throughout their years at COJOWA. Several grades at our school have partnerships with Manzanillo, so getting a strong foundation of experience in second grade is a wonderful start.”
Maria Alejandra says that the biggest academic outcomes from the learning experience this year include:
Vocabulary development
Empathy and understanding of the Manzanillo community
Engagement and enthusiasm with the process of writing
Motivation to write and share (as students could see the purpose in writing their stories about Manzanillo)
“Our homeroom teachers are also very interested in this experience,” says Jessica. “There’s a Project Based Learning (PBL) unit about communities in English at almost the same time, and next year we want to align these for greater impact.”
Maria Alejandra will continue working with Manzanillo teachers and contributing to the resources as part of their professional development (PD) plans. Manzanillo teachers had the opportunity to engage in three PD workshops at COJOWA this year, and the elementary principal has joined PD sessions with COJOWA teachers, as well.
There is a desire to support access to quality education for local learners, and building capacity in the local teachers is a sustainable, grassroots way of improving the educational experiences for all learners.
Below: photos of the COJOWA and Manzanillo students sharing their stories together.
