Essay wins class trip to Walk With Dinosaurs for entire third grade at Carolina Elementary

Harrison Corns parlayed his writing skills and interest in science, most specifically dinosaurs, into a field trip for the entire third grade at Carolina Elementary School by winning an ETV essay contest with a grand prize of 50 tickets to see Walk With Dinosaurs at the Colonial Life Arena in Columbia last Sunday.
ETV invited third-grade teachers to have their classes write an essay, 150 words or less, on spending a day walking among dinosaurs.

Two third-grade teachers at Carolina Elementary, veteran teacher Rachel Fletcher and first-year teacher Julie Hamlin, challenged their students to the task. About 30 Carolina Elementary third-graders completed the essay process, and their essays were among the nearly 500 essays judged in the contest. Only one could be the grand prize winner and that was Corns, a student in Hamlin’s class.

Hamlin said she told the students to write an essay about what they would hear, see, smell and touch if they walked among the dinosaurs.

Corns, who was sick when the students were told about the contest, thought it was just another assignment and wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having to write an essay. Writing isn’t his favorite subject, but science is. When he heard the essay was about dinosaurs, he didn’t mind as much.

An avid reader of non-fiction science books, Corns already knew a lot about the subject of dinosaurs.

Corns wrote that “Walking with dinosaurs would be noisy like thunder.” He said he would see “grasslands, forest and deserts.” And “Insects would be bigger because the dinosaurs - Raptors, Brachiosaurus, T-Rex and others - would have huge appetites.”

His mother, Cathy Brown-Corns, said her son has been fascinated with dinosaurs since he was 2-years-old.

Touching a dinosaur Corns wrote, “might be scaly, might be smooth, it might be shaking its body to the groove.”

Hamlin said one of her favorite sentences in the essay was the one where Corns said, “It might be stinky because they don’t have dinosaur restrooms.”

The day before the announcement, Corns had assured his teacher that they were going to win.

“He knew he had done his best,” Hamlin said. When Hamlin read it the first time, she said she showed it to the principal and other teachers. “I said, ‘If we don’t win there is something wrong.’”

Hamlin was certain they should have a winner.

“He used large words and covered all the bases,” she said.

It wasn’t required but Corns included an illustration with his essay as did many of the children.

Corns said they had a short period of time to write the essays and even less to prepare for Sunday’s field trip once the announcement was made.

Hamlin received word on Oct. 7 that Corns’ essay was the winner, and the students would be attending the event on Oct. 11. The trip had been pre-approved, just in case one of the students did win, but they didn’t have much time to alert the parents. Hamlin said permission slips went out the day they were notified.

When the phone rang in the classroom, Hamlin said she answered it because she had an idea it would be about the contest. She said she tried to fool the children by saying she was sorry but “we won.”

In particular, Corns won. When he heard the news, Corns said, “I jumped up and down.”

“He got up and hopped all the around the room,” Hamlin said.

Since they all wrote essays, Hamlin said the entire class felt like they had won, too.

Corns said writing the essay was a challenge. To his dismay, he said he had to rewrite it six times, but the prize was worth the trouble. He had to re-arrange the order and cut out some words because he went over the 150-word limit.

“I think he learned a lot from the writing process,” Hamlin said. She said this was her first essay contest, but she would like to do a lot more.