Monster Mania: Polson students collaborate on multi-faceted project

“What is your monster’s name?” Cherry Valley teacher Joanie Bowen asked Jackson Mays.

“Dave,” the first grader replied. He held his orange and green, eight-legged, multi-eyed monster out for the other kids to see, and the monster’s star-shaped antennae wriggled.

In the sharing circle each kid introduced and held up his or her monster for the rest of the class to see; there were stripes, horns, polka dots, squiggles, many eyes, lots of legs and different sizes and shapes, made from fabric in all the colors in the crayon box.

Bowen’s class had just returned from Cherry Valley’s lunchroom where the children met the textile artists, writers, and graphic artists from Polson Middle School and Polson High School who brought these monsters to life. Students in upper grades created 3-D monsters, wrote stories starring the first graders’ monsters, published print storybooks or created digital storybooks children could read on their iPads. 

It was the culmination of a reading, writing, drawing, sewing, and media project that engaged Polson students from first graders to high school.

The fun project started when PHS Consumer Sciences teacher Stephanie Anderson attended a conference and heard teachers from another school talking about the project. Of course, she wanted details. 

She learned that first graders started by reading “How I Met My Monster,” a story by Amanda Noll and Howard McMillan. Then, the creative little critters would each draw a picture of their monster and color the portrait. 

The picture would go to the high school sewing class and be made into a 3-D model of each child’s monster. 

That was as far as the project at the conference went but Anderson’s version took on “a life of its own,” she said. 

Reaching out to other teachers, Anderson recruited Bowen’s first grade class, who read the book and drew phenomenal pictures. 

Anderson’s Clothing and Textiles class received the drawings, split into teams, and began constructing the monsters from fabric. The class was learning to sew and use sewing machines so monsters were a fun way to practice. 

Shay Morin, a junior at PHS, worked on “a green monster with little elf ears, green and blue striped arms, and a really big smile,” she said, smiling herself.

A classmate, Elsie Johnson, who is a freshman, helped construct a “brown circular monster, who sort of looked like a potato,” she described.

Then Anderson’s daughter, who is an eighth grader at Polson Middle School, said maybe her class could write the stories. Eighth grade teacher Tessa Hupka and her English students agreed and were drawn into the project. 

Then Tammy Morrison’s Media Mania class joined the fray to make digital storybooks equipped with QR codes that led children to videos of her class reading the stories aloud.

“Then we brought them back,” Anderson said, gesturing to the pandemonium of talking, laughing, reading kids. 

“I mean this is just amazing to see how many kids got to be involved in this one project,” Anderson added. “I love how it goes vertically through the school district.” 

    Cherry Valley first grader Elise McCurdy and Polson Middle School eighth grader Allyson Lamphere show off Elise's monster, and the story Allyson wrote titled "Bean Makes a Friend." (Tami Morrison photo)
  

    Polson students Lilly Bisson (10th grade), Luke Horner, Zayne Newman and Aedan Dupuis (eighth grade) and Bruce McNutt (first grade) worked together in a unique collaborative project that involved reading, writing, sewing, technology and monsters. (Tami Morrison photo)
  

    These two girls were writers for Jackson Mays' monster Dave. (Berl Tiskus/Leader)
  

    First grader Drake Cole looks at his digital storybook about his monster. (Berl Tiskus/Leader)