With family, friends, and their fellow students surrounding them, Reed Intermediate School students in Valerie Pagano-Hepburn and Georgia Smith’s sixth grade cluster shared stories and “heart maps,” on Friday, December 19.

Students took turns reading their stories before students, then gave their parents the heart maps, which were wrapped like presents and framed.

As Ms Pagano-Hepburn has shared in the past, the concept of heart maps comes from George Heard’s Awakening the Heart: Exploring Poetry in Elementary and Middle School.

To begin the project this year, Ms Pagano-Hepburn said students first wrote personal narrative pieces. The heart maps were then designed by each student. Within a heart, students shared memories and colored in different colors. According to Ms Pagano-Hepburn, the students then wrote a story based on one of the memories from their heart map.

“It’s a wonderful, loving experience for everybody,” said Ms Pagano-Hepburn.

Ms Pagano-Hepburn and Ms Smith said the students’ work was “amazing” and “awesome.”

“They really took a lot of time doing it, a lot of thought was put into it,” Ms Smith said, “and they were very proud of what the product turned out to be.”

The heart maps project was started three years ago, according to Ms Pagano-Hepburn, to help students explore the art of memoir writing.

Students wrote a range of stories, according to Ms Pagano-Hepburn. Katie Stan read a story about her family visiting Bermuda.

“I’ll always remember that time I spent with my family,” Katie read to her table, with her mother Julie seat beside her. The center of Katie’s heart map included family members and her two guinea pigs.

Alyssa Bailey wrote about a Christmas memory, Flora Islam wrote about Thanksgiving, and Elena Paruin also wrote about Christmas.

Across the room, Daly King said she wrote a memory about visiting Sam’s Tree Farm, where her family goes to get a tree each year.

Leah McCafferty wrote about one of her family’s traditions. For Christmas each year, Leah said each member of her family buys a gift under a certain amount of money, and family members roll dice for the chance to switch a gift with someone else.

Each heart map was given as a present to parents or guardians on Friday after students read their stories.

Ms Pagano-Hepburn said the heart maps are the perfect gift for family members at this time of the year.

Iced tea and heart-shaped cookies were served during the event.