Mrs. Singer's Class
Terryville Elementary School
Port Jefferson Station, New York

Cooperative Apple Stories

We read If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and loved this funny story very much. We visited Apple Bytes and enjoyed reading student apple stories that were a take off of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie. The students who wrote the stories live in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We found this state on the map. It was very far away from Long Island, New York. This second grade class from South Dakota winds up being our Travel Buddies for Classroom Pet Exchange, which will start very soon. We loved reading their stories and seeing the beautiful drawings that they made. We decided that we wanted to do the stories too! Our stories were written together in cooperative groups. Some students used Kids Pix to illustrate and other used crayons.  

If you give a dog an apple jolly rancher.
She will want some water to go with it.
It will remind her of the beach.
The beach will get too hot and she will want to go home. At home, she will want to play hide and go seek. The she will want to take a walk. She will find her friend and want to play with him. It will rain and they will go inside. That will make them of a jolly rancher.
And chances are.... they'll get thirsty and want another glass of water.
by Dylan and Lisa

If you give a shark an apple,
it will ask you for some juice.
It will remind him of the lake,
so he will go swimming.
He will want a towel.
He steps in some gum which remind him of sticky things.
And chances are... he'll think of food and want another apple to eat.
by Brian and Chris

If you give a whale some apple pie,
he might want some ice cream to go on top.
He might want to go outside to look at the clouds. The clouds will remind him of more ice cream. Just thinking about it makes him cold. Now he wants a cup of hot chocolate which will remind him of a hot tub. He will get hot and want to go in the pool. The pool will make him cold. He might want to go inside.
And chances are....If you another piece of apple
pie, he'll ask for ice cream.
by Keith and Kristen

If you give an armadillo some apple jacks,
she will want a spoon and milk.
She will want her mom to pour the milk in the bowl.
She will ask for some apple juice and then want to take a walk. Then she will get tired and want to take a nap. She will want to hear a story and have her mom tuck her in bed. She will get hungry.
And chances are... she will want more applejacks, but this time a carton of milk too.
by Sean and Jennifer

Assessment

Five Point Rubric

This was the rubric we used to assess students' cooperative work.  Each item was peer assessed and a point value was given.

New York State Standards
English Language Arts

1) Listening and reading to acquire information and understanding involves collecting data, facts, and ideas; discovering relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and using knowledge from oral, written, and electronic sources.
Students:gather and interpret information from children's reference books, magazines, textbooks, electronic bulletin boards, audio and media presentations, oral interviews, and from such forms as charts, graphs, maps, and diagrams select information appropriate to the purpose of their investigation and relate ideas from one text to another

2. Speaking and writing to acquire and transmit information requires asking probing and clarifying questions, interpreting information in one's own words, applying information from one context to another, and presenting the information and interpretation clearly, concisely, and comprehensibly.
Students: present information clearly in a variety of oral and written forms such as summaries, paraphrases, brief reports, stories, posters, and charts select a focus, organization, and point of view for oral and written presentations use a few traditional structures for conveying information such as chronological order, cause and effect, and similarity and difference