Fifth Grade Writing Assignment

One of the interesting aspects of coordinating the schooling for our grandsons is helping them work through new projects. For Isaiah and Caleb, in their literacy class they are studying various genres of writing. Their major assignment this week was “Assignment: Write a Mystery”. Here are the instructions that they were given (in addition to the typical instructions of using proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, etc.):

You are going to create a short mystery in your journal!

Directions:

1) Make sure your story has a beginning, middle, and end. 

2) Your story must have at least three paragraphs.

3) Write about the following: 

Pretend you just found a backpack by your front door. There are five items in it.

4) Answer the following questions in your writing:

- What are the items in the bag?

- When did the bag get left by your door?

- Who left it there?

- Why did it get left for you?

- Where are you going to take it or what are you going to do with its contents?

- How will you solve this mystery?

 

I thought that this was an interesting assignment. Since I typically review their assignments earlier in the week, I thought I’d write an example of what they should be doing. So I decided to write my own response to this assignment – written from the perspective of one of them. I did this while one of them was sitting next to me working on another subject – and when I showed it to him he was astounded that I had only taken 15 minutes to write it. My biggest challenge was not having to write at least three paragraphs (of at least five sentences each – which is a requirement for all their writing this year). Rather, it was keeping it in alignment with all the other requirements and making sure that all the questions in (4) above were answered.

So, here is my submission to this fifth-grade writing assignment.

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The Backpack Mystery

Our dog, Mocha, is usually pretty quiet. But whenever he hears someone in the front yard he jumps up on the sofa to look out and then he barks. I was not surprised when he barked this morning while I was in the kitchen eating my breakfast. We often get deliveries from Amazon and while most leave things by the garage door, some put the packages by the front door. I wondered what we were getting delivered today, but I stayed to finish my breakfast before my cereal got soggy.

After breakfast I went and opened the front door. I was expecting to see a brown box from Amazon. So I was surprised to see instead a bright blue backpack. I looked around, but whomever had left it there was long gone. It was starting to rain, so I picked it up and brought it inside. Then I got surprised again – there was a tag tied onto the support straps and written on the tag was my name! What was going on? I already had a backpack – it was old and worn and this wasn’t it.

Sitting on the couch, I unzipped the backpack to see what was in it and pulled out the contents one-by-one. It was a strange collection – a brand-new notebook of drawing paper, a set of colored pencils, a page of address labels – each one with a name and age on it, a large pre-stamped mailing envelope which was addressed to the local children’s hospital, and a smaller envelope with my name on it. I checked all the side pockets, but they were empty. Then I looked closely at the address labels – noting that while I did not know any of the individuals named, all the ages were between 5 and 9. It was only then that I thought about looking in the smaller envelope.

There was a single sheet of paper in the envelope. The words on the page suddenly made it clear what was going on. They said, “You are a very skilled artist. I’ve seen some of your work. There are many children who are confined to their bed in the local hospital who would love to have one of your drawings. Please share your talents with them. The backpack will be yours to keep.” It was signed, “A. J.”.

I was pretty sure that the “A. J.” stood for “Auntie Joy”. This was her way of keeping me busy – by sharing my drawings with children who would really appreciate them. I had a long weekend ahead of me as 25 drawings don’t just happen overnight. Actually, 26 drawings – because I would do one more as a thank you to “A. J.”.  But the next week there would be a lot of happy faces in the children’s hospital. And my drawings would be helping those children to smile – perhaps for the first time in several days! Thanks, Auntie Joy for giving me a new way to bless others!

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What do you think? Do I get an “A” for my fifth-grade writing assignment?