Lakewood Ranch High seniors share original children's stories at Bashaw Elementary School

MANATEE -- Twelve years ago, Maddie Biggs remembers being a kindergarten student in Linda Schneider's class at Bashaw Elementary School when seniors from Lakewood Ranch High School visited to read their original children's stories.

On Friday, Biggs was back in Schneider's classroom, only this time, she was the senior reading to the last crop of kindergarten students.

"I remember the big kids coming to read to me. It's kind of weird coming back and reading to them," Biggs said.

In her English class, Biggs and another student created "Jacob's First Day Jitters," an original children's book about a student who is nervous for his first day of first grade, but ends up having the best day ever.

The seniors researched child development, created their own story that corresponds with academic standards the students are learning in their classrooms, created corresponding activities to go along with the book and then headed over to the school to share what they've done. More than 300 Lakewood Ranch seniors came headed over to Bashaw on seven buses Friday for the annual event and were in each Bashaw classroom. The annual event is called "Winnie the Pooh and Shakespeare, Too"

While some of the books taught life lessons, about not being afraid of the first day of school, other books incorporated science or history lessons.

Fifth-grade student Madison Eberhard learned about different modes of transportation from one of her books, as the seniors wrote a story about a man on a mission to make a birthday party. Before he can get to his party, he encounters a number of challenges, requiring him to travel on a stream boat, a train and even a wagon.

"It was fun," she said. "I liked how they called it the Milky Way River and the Peppermint Forest."

Paul Abreu and Parker Bradley wrote a book in which the main character travels back in time to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The students learned where, when and who was involved with the important document.

"The book we wrote is about the start of America," Bradley said.

For one their activities, the boys brought a beach ball which had the numbers one through eight written on it, corresponding to a question covered in the book. After reading the book to the students, the group headed outside. They tossed the ball around and whichever number the student's right hand landed closest to was the question the student had to answer.

"It was pretty cool, a life-changing experience," Abreu said.

"As much as we might not have wanted to do it, it's probably way better than the alternative what we would have been doing at school right now," Bradley said.

Meghin Delaney, education reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7081. Follow her on Twitter@MeghinDelaney.

This story was originally published May 13, 2016 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Lakewood Ranch High seniors share original children's stories at Bashaw Elementary School ."