Butte students paint, scrapbook to learn writing

PALMER -- While the focus of this year's Butte Elementary School's jump-start summer program for fourth- and fifth-graders may have been the six traits of writing, one step into the classroom last week and it was clear that the real fun was happening with some imagination and a couple buckets of paint.

"We wanted something that was community service oriented for the kids to do," said co-instructor Nikki Boozer, who has taught fifth grade at the school for two years. Boozer and her colleague, Dwight Homstad, decided to incorporate a school beautification project into the two-week summer school program.

"We wanted summer school to be fun," said Homstad, a Butte teacher for the past eight years. Both Homstad and Boozer thought the outside of the elementary building was a little plain, so students spent part of their summer course designing and painting colorful, billboard-like signs to hang on the outside of the building.

Butte Elementary is a Title I school, and the school's jump-start program is made possible by federal funding through the No Child Left Behind Act. All Butte students were eligible for the summer program, regardless of scholastic performance or family income, but classroom size kept the fourth- and fifth-grade program at 19 students.

Students learned the six traits of writing -- conventions, ideas, organization, voice, word choice and sentence fluency -- through a number of different classroom activities. Besides painting, students created scrapbooks, kept journals and wrote a journalism article about their school beautification project.

"I think my favorite part has to be the painting," said Sarah Olson, who will start fourth grade this fall. "It's really fun and you get to work in a group with someone."

Homstad agreed.

"I think seeing the quality of job done with the painting has been exciting," Homstad said. "I've been really impressed with how they've done."

The students wrapped up the two-week course on Friday with an open house. Family members were able to view the student's paintings and scrapbooks before the kids went home for a couple more weeks of uninterrupted summer.