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A Kid's Eye View of the Neighborhood




The prompt for a writing test was to describe your neighborhood. Here are some responses. I've included all the mistakes the kids made...


By AS (living in a shelter):
My neighborhood it dark because all the lihgts are out i wish they ern't and some nights i hear gun shots and i hear exsploshons in the in side it is good all the light on and i am meetting new friends. it has trash all over the growed some time i pick it up it good to pick it up because you can help the ebdvirment. it has shady trees. It looks like a night mayor. outside sometimes it smells like poop

By JR:
People be getting noked out. On east 14th ever were. People do drugs and saleing them. They do it every where. People be rily bad. Because they do bad stuf. There pepole that they be mean to you. They do it all the time. People be sad they there. Fillings hurt. People scream to much.

By JS:
Loud guns and dogs. Clean homes. People and homeys. Smells like food and sausages and smoke. It is dirty sometimes it is quiet sometimes. Their is a lot of trees and their is a big big tree. it covers half of the neighborhood. Their is a lot of homes and their is a sewer beside us.

By YM:
My Neighborhood is very loud. I hear gunshots. You can hear cars. It smell like flowers and sometimes smells like garbge. We have scary cats. I run from them a lot. I have lot of Neighbors on our block. It is a lot of kids. Everbody is flamily. We all love each other. But my mom said she does not like is some time becuase there are shooting and she is scared. That is my neighorhood.

By AJ (whose mother is white, dad black - you'll see why I mention that when you get to the store part):

In my neighborhood some people are nice and some are mean. There are a lots of trees in my neighborhood. In front of my house people threw trash on the ground and my dad have to pick it up. Across the street there is a park and the park is brooken and we can't play on it. At night time it's quiet because people are asleep. I'm scared of the dark because everytime the light is out my brother scares me. My neighborhood is loud because there are guns, shooting, and there is dogs barking. Black people hangout by the store and my mom is scared because she don't like that store. My dad go there to get milk. People do donuts just to be funny and my family don't like it.

Oh, and the park being "broken?" I've asked parents - there's a nice park that the city put in for the kids in the projects - but you can't play in it because people have been assaulted and killed there. It looks nice though.

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