We recently finished reading The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba & Bryan Mealer.  We recommend reading the memoir before watching the movie.  Students annotated throughout the reading of this memoir.  They were asked to identify elements of the story, theme, and explain the importance of the chosen quotes.  I would like to showcase some of their work below.

“If you want to make it, all you have to do is try,” (Kamkwamba & Mealer 278). I chose this quote because it shows just how much of a genius William is and how much he has matured over the course of his life.

Scan the QR code to see Samantha’s artwork.

You can also access her artwork for the quote by clicking William’s Quote

“At this point, I didn’t know much about science, or that doing science could be a job. But I was becoming more and more curious about how things worked,” (Kamkwanba & Mealer 50). This is important to the story because this is the point when he realizes he wants to be a scientist.

Click on the following link to view another piece of digital art by Teagan that depicts the Theme of the book.

The Together Tree

By: Z.W.

One foggy night in the Creekwood Forest there were five little sprouts peeping out of the ground. Their names were Sprout, Forest, Gunner, Willow, and Cypress. They were little oak trees beginning to grow in one little circle. Willow was next to Sprout, Sprout was next to Gunner, Gunner was next to Cypress, Cypress was next to Forest and forest was next to willow. A cute little bunch they were. One day they all began to cave in on each other. Fortunately, there was a huge tree that grew at rapid speed, held them up, and saved them.

We took the first semester to practice our creative writing skills and got a hang on how to keep stories concise.  This is truly a challenge but so much fun to do.  We’re sharing a few of our 100-word stories with you, please let us know what you think.  We’ll be ready to participate with other students around the world in January 2021.

Happy Reading! 

Image writing prompt for Cannon

Cannon By Cate

On Saturday in St.Augustine Florida, these men are about to do a demonstration of the cannons going off. They are very scared because it is their first time doing it. They are newbies. When the demonstration starts they launch the cannon great. Then when it comes to putting the cannon away that is a whole different story. These men were not very strong. They could not move it, so they had to push it all together. They then go the cannon back safely to the spot. Later that night they went out to dinner. They recapped on that one crazy day.

The Missing Shoes By Ashley

I was getting ready for school and putting my shoes on when suddenly, they were gone! I ran around looking everywhere, but not even my mom could find them. She told me to just grab a different pair but those were my best pair. I couldn’t stand not having them. I realized that we had no time left, but mom promised to look for them later. When I came home that day, she had a mad look on her face. She had told me they were on my shelf, but I didn’t remember putting them on there, so that is exactly what I told her.

A 100 Word Story By K.A.

It was the first day of school for Tim, and his bus was going to be there in five minutes. When he got on the bus, he was sitting all alone until someone named Johnathan came to sit with him. At the end of the day, Johnathan and Tim had become very close, and Tim wanted Johnathan to come over. Once the boys arrived at Tim’s house, they wanted to build something. They started building a rocketship, and there were a lot of parts they needed, but there was one item they didn’t have and then they forgot another part. They thought it was going to be fine, but the rocketship ended up blowing up. At the end, Johnathan said “Tim you forgot to put it on.”

After working on an independent reading project, students created book trailers for the novels.  They used a variety of digital tools to create their trailers.  We hope you enjoy watching some of them and hope you choose to read some of the books.

Pardon our dust, we are getting our content ready to showcase soon.  In the meantime, click on our next two pages to learn more about our class blog page.