A group of GHS students learned what school looks from the teacher’s point of view when they took a literary lesson to some Cherokee County elementary students.

Heather White and Mollie Vassey, tenth grade English teachers at Gaffney High School, are always looking for new ways to involve their students in exciting projects and authentic learning opportunities. At the beginning of the school year, White was asked to be a mystery reader by her son’s pre-k teacher at Grassy Pond Elementary. She was excited and looked for a unique way to involve her students and her son’s classmates.

Once she came up with the idea to have her students enact a dramatic reading for her son’t class, she proposed her plan to her students and Dr. Fitzpatrick, who were both enthusiastic about the idea. After Vassey was on board with the idea and brought her students into the program, White brought the idea to Mr. Foster, the GHS graduation coach, who helped White and Vassey with some of the logistics.  The students planned to read the book Diary of a Worm to the preschoolers at Grassy Pond and B.D. Lee Elementary Schools. They made it a mini-drama: scenes, costumes, and roles, which the students all created themselves. White narrated the story while her students acted it out. To involve the preschoolers in the story, students made more than one hundred bookworms for the kids in the classes.

“I wanted to show them how school can be fun, and to motivate [my students] to do well. They liked the idea of going on a field trip,” White said.