Southeast Middle School students participate in co-op education.

Students at Southeast Middle School are helping fourth grade students in Texas with their Essays through way of video messaging.

“They love doing this anyway, a lot of them are already playing games, where they’ re talking to people far away, and it’s good to interact with somebody from a different culture, even though we’ re still in the United States and it’s still only Mesquite, Texas; they’re still seeing someone from a different perspective; because they’re younger than them.” Said Amanda Jones Southeast Middle English teacher,

Jones says fourth grade students were given an essay that included writing about someone that encouraged them, or was important, and they had to explain why.

This then required 7th graders at Southeast Middle to offer suggestions of improvements.

“They made a video explaining the editing and revising steps, or they opted out and typed it up in a longer script; then were posting it all on a pallet, so the fourth graders can make videos back for us, and eventually we use it on our own essays.”Said Amanda Jones Southeast Middle English teacher,

Jones said this idea came to mind after speaking to her sister in Texas, who also is an English teacher.

“My sister actually has been teaching three years before me, and her classroom is phenomenon; she always does amazing projects, and partially this was her idea. She was working on some of the editing, and revising with her fourth graders and I talked about how I was struggling to show mine”Said Amanda Jones Southeast Middle English teacher,

Jones also says by students reviewing 4th graders papers, it helps them improve their writing skills.

“They’re looking at their essays to look for any positive things that they’ve done with editing and make plausible suggestions on their essays how they could improve or enhance that; then they looked at the rubric, they had to dissect it and analyze it kind of in turn of helping them kind of look at their own rubric they’re looking for.”Said Amanda Jones Southeast Middle English teacher,

In the end, students will be able to video chat with students that they’ve helped.

“We want them to eventually in May Skype with their fourth grader that their paired with, so that they had time to practice what they want to say, right now they’re learning that if they didn’t do a well enough script, and they didn’t prepare, that the videos don’t really workout to well.”Said Amanda Jones Southeast Middle English teacher,