SHARP guides, students and teachers experience successes – large and small – with every workshop we conduct. Whether it is a normally reticent student raising his/her hand to contribute to the conversation or classmates collaborating effectively on a project, meaningful moments abound. Darla Yang 3^rd grade teacher at Hmong American Peace Academy shares her recent classroom experience…

After reading the SHARP Literacy book, There Grows the Neighborhood, 3^rd graders at Hmong American Peace Academy learned about murals and different types of communities. The students were then given a mural project, in which they had to depict at least four objects from their community. As a class, we brainstormed ideas about things we often see in our communities. Some ideas the students came up with included: gardens, school, houses, police stations, hospitals, fire stations, libraries, and malls. Then, the students drafted a rough sketch of their mural. Afterward, students were given various craft items to create their murals. When the students finished their mural, they wrote a short paragraph about one special place in their community giving three reasons why it is important. My students had so much joy being able to craft together a project that tied in with what they learned from SHARP.

Two murals stood out for me because of the effort the students had put into them and the depth of their short paragraphs. One student created a mural focusing on a detailed church. Then, he wrote about how his church is a special place to him because it is where he gets to see his friends, see nature, and wonder about grown up things. His thoughtful writing matched so well with his creative mural. The other student put a police station, roads, houses, and a mall in his mural. This student wrote about how the police station was a special place because police officers keep us safe by protecting our neighborhoods. These are examples of ways my students used what they learned in SHARP lessons to understand their own surroundings.