Allan Appel Photo
Paris Lewis clarified her understanding of fractions when she wrote up her family’s cornbread recipe.
Who says publishing isn’t a sweet industry any more?
It is when you’re bringing out a cookbook and you get to eat red velvet cake, chocolate balls, mud pie, popcorn, and cookies galore, based on your own family recipes.
That happened at Tuesday afternoon’s publishing party for Jessica Light’s Davis Street School fifth-grade cookbook. The party drew a dozen parents and two dozen kid authors to their class, for desserts and demonstrations of their writing.
Nora Hill (pictured with Light) not only wrote up the family’s chocolate lava cake recipe; she, like the other kids, had to describe the dish evocatively with adjectives derived from the senses, or tell the recipe’s family origins, or both.
Their other task was to adapt the ounces, cups, and pounds in the recipes first for a group of eight eaters and then for a classful of 24.
“You taste the sweet dough, chunky nuts, and plump raisins. These ingredients combined are like a firecracker in my mouth,” wrote Elena Hogan-Perez.
That helped several kids, like Luana Fullton, overcome some math jitters.
Each kid also had to write — and a few read aloud to their guests — what Light called a “reflection” on the assignment. Luana said she felt strong as a writer but scared of her understanding of fractions.
“Combining” the skills “made it easier,” she reported.
Light, a six-year veteran teacher, said doing the cookbook was a new project idea. “It started as a math project, fractions, and then it made sense to do a descriptive writing project” too, she said.
As is sometimes the case with a good assignment, it became a focal point for other activities the class is engaged in.
As the kids brought in their grandmothers’ recipes from old Italy, or from the American south, they appreciated that they are a diverse and interesting group.
When that came up during Tuesday’s discussion, Vinnie Damiani (pictured), who brought in his great-grandmother’s butter fingers recipe, said he could relate that to the world of the protagonist in Hana Brady’s novel Hana’s Suitcase, which all the fifth graders in the class are reading.
“How is our classroom different from a classroom in [Hana’s World War Two-era] Czechoslovakia?” Light prompted her students.
“There’d be no Jews,” Vinnie replied.
If there were, they’d have to wear the yellow star, another of the kids added.
“In our class, everyone is different, and that’s the best part,” said Paris.
Light said that from a pedagogical point of view, the work was a challenge: to get the math down for each kid, along with a piece of writing presentable to parents and other adults.
What moved her most was how her students helped her, and each other, she reported.
On Tuesday, what moved the kids a lot was seeing and indulging in what Vinnie called “oo-ey goo-ey” delights — a classroom full of them.