First-Grade Inventors and Eighth-Grade Mentors Turn Imagination into Reality Through Classroom Partnership

First-grade inventors and eighth-grade mentors are turning imaginations into realities through a classroom partnership at Orchard Ridge Elementary (ORE) and Toki Middle School.

October marked the third annual collaboration between teacher Lee Brigg’s eighth-grade design and fabrication class and ORE’s first-grade classes. Starting with a sketch and writing descriptive sentences, first-grade students brainstorm and design their “magnificent thing” – any item they want to build with an eighth-grade buddy. Then, Briggs’ classes spend three days with the first-grade students, helping them choose materials and use tools to build their item. 

First-grade students leaned forward and stretched out of their seats, eyes wide and hands waving as the eighth graders walked into the classroom. One young student got out of his seat to personally request his eighth-grade partner because “he has hair just like me!” 

Before long, teachers Becky Christy and Megan Schumacher’s first-grade classrooms looked like a toy workshop as students worked with rolls of yarn, towers of cardboard, boxes of empty paper towel rolls, wheels of tape, baskets of pipe cleaners – and zero shortage of imagination. 

First-grade student Royce and her eighth-grade partner held a narrow, tall rectangular box; but they saw it as the perfect makings of a tree trunk. Students worked on a wide variety of designs: a guitar, dollhouse, jet pack, fairy garden, cat, wearable butterfly wings and airplanes, bird nest and much more. 

“Everyone benefits from the partnership,” Christy said. “Our first-graders would not be able to bring their ideas fully to life without the help of the students. We get a better quality project by working with the older students, creating a sense of pride in the finished project. They are excited to have this relationship building.”

The collaboration also targets both grade levels’ curriculum. Schumacher and Christy shared how the project connects to their classes’ emotional learning and literacy curriculum, as students practice how initiative, perseverance and collaboration help them complete tasks. It also “brings the academic language to life,” Christy said, giving kids a chance to plan, revise and edit their design just like they do when they are writing.

At the eighth-grade level, Briggs’ has witnessed similar growth in his students’ academic and emotional learning. Briggs described his class as a woods class mixed with engineering concepts, so when they collaborate with the first-graders, the eighth-grade students are in charge of safely using a utility knife, hot glue gun and more. But they’re also helping their young partners focus, communicate, manage conflicts, take turns and wait in line.

“Middle school kids want to feel like a grown up, and what better way to do that than to give them the responsibility of helping out younger students and give all the skills we have worked on,” Briggs said. “Being helpful and looked up to by the younger kids they are helping has a profound effect on my students, they can't help but feel valued when they see how their effort helps make their younger partner happy.”

As middle school Career and Technical Education (CTE) curriculum continues to grow year-after-year in MMSD, the collaboration also plants seeds of interest in first grade students’ minds. Christy said one of her students shared how excited they are to take Briggs’ course in six years.

“What we love is that students are joyful and creating community within their classroom and school communities, " Christy said. “We are creating a culture of belonging.”