CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.4.3

Jet Bikes Have you ever run a business from a playhouse? My friends and I have. It is a bike shop. We call it Jet Bikes. One day my friend Trent asked me and my brother Jared if we wanted to build a bike shop out of his old playhouse. Jared and I said, “Yes.” So we went to get permission from my mom to go to Trent’s house and get started. The first thing we did was get some things out of his garage. We got old, rusty bolts; new, shiny nuts; black tape; wrenches; half-empty cans of oil; and screws. Then we built a new roof for the playhouse.

Ann Do you have a friend who loves you? Well, I did. Her name was Ann. She was a very close friend of mine. She was almost like family to me. Ann was very kind, and she had bright blue eyes and curly gray hair. I loved her very much. She invited me to go swimming every summer. We had a lot of fun all those summers. But she could not get in the water most of the time because she was sick. Sometimes my sisters would come swimming, too. But it was better with just Ann and me because I just wanted to spend time with her. Ann always listened to me when I had a problem.

Grandpa, Chaz, and Me It was a few months before my brother was born. My grandpa was perfectly fine, but then he went to the doctor for a checkup. The doctors found something wrong. They said they had to run some tests. Then they said he had colon cancer. The doctors wanted to run more tests, so Grandpa had to stay in the hospital for a while. After he got home, I played with him. He would always play with me and do all sorts of stuff. I loved my grandpa. I liked to hear him play his harmonica. He even tried to teach me how to play it. Then he had to go back to the hospital for surgery.

The Day I Took the Spotlight Wouldn’t it be superb to have one moment when you took the spotlight, to have everybody clapping for you and cheering loudly? I have had that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—the day I took the spotlight! Sometime in February, my teacher told us all about the Woodmen of America speech contest. The topic was “people who have overcome obstacles in their lives.” I thought my great-grandma Lorraine Parsley, who has had recurring cancer 13 times and is still living, would be perfect.