Song of Houston at Pat Neff Elementary School

Jinett Martinez is a second-grade teacher at Neff Elementary School, in the Sharpstown district, and is working with HGOco as part of a year-long school-wide Song of Houston collaboration. The project involves every student and staff member, some parents and community members as well.

Everyone is learning how to conduct oral history interviews and from those interviews, each class is creating an artistic project. The second grade students and teachers are working, under the auspices of HGOco’s Song of Houston, with FotoFest’s Literacy Through Photography (LTP) program.

Here’s how Ms. Martinez described the work that they’ve already been doing as part of the LTP curriculum:

My students are excited to be writing about their life stories as part of our year-long collaboration! Thus far, my bilingual second-grade class has written about their seven or eight years of their lives in English.

From these writings they created a timeline from when they were born till now, highlighting the important events of their lives. They presented their timelines to the class.

Donna’s Timeline

I was born in August 2001 at Bentaub Hospital.
2002 I learned to walk and stopped using pampers.
2003 I ate by myself.

Jose’s Timeline

2000 I was in my mom's tummy.
2001 I was born.
2002 My first Halloween.
2003 I learned to talk in Spanish.

They did another writing project in class dreaming about what they would like to be when they grow up. They read their stories in front of the class as an oral presentation in English. They also took their individual pictures in Mrs. Stowes’ computer lab.

Here’s some of the great work that they’ve done:

My Dream

My name is Domingo.
I am eight years old.
I am a second grader at Neff Elementary.
My favorite subjects are math and science.
I want to go to Sharpstown Middle School to learn music and arquitect.
I want to go to Bellaire High School to do sports.
Then I want to go to college to do Art and math.
I want to be a teacher to teach math and art.

My Dream

My name is Ignacio.
My favorite class is P.E. or physical education.
I also like to read and learn a lot.
I want to go to Pin Oaks for languages.
Then I want to go to the Visual Arts High School.
Finally I want to go to University of Houston to be a cartoon artist.

We are very fortunate to be part of this project are looking forward to the middle and final outcome on May 15, 2009 when all of our students’ creative projects will be displayed or performed at Hooray for Neff day!