Students mix mustard, words to create prize winning stories

By Natalie Wasilczuk What do you know about mustard? Its flavor and texture? Its color and form? Could you explain how it’s made? Arrowhead teacher Liz Jorgensen and her previous semester’s creative writing classes can. Last spring, Jorgensen and her students prepared children’s books for the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum’s third annual writing contest. They blindly sampled seven specialty mustards, brainstormed adjectives to describe the condiment, and watched a video on how the product is made. They also read several children’s books, helping the students “to write like published authors do,” said Jorgensen. The activities were intended to provide the students with enough background information to write winning books. It worked. Five Arrowhead students, Zach Trepanier, Jon Tajnai, T.J. Bahr, Kelsey Allard, and Alyssa Hayett... [read full story]