By Ida Brown
Oakland Heights Elementary School can proudly boast they now have published authors in every class.
Individual and classbooks have been published by students in grades K-12. A book signing will be held today at 1:30 p.m. in the school's library.
The project was made possible through Nationwide Learning Inc., a Topeka, Kans., based company committed to motivating students to learn to read and write through innovative publishing opportunities. In August, a representative of the company contacted Oakland Heights teacher Marilyn Faulkner about students receiving a published book they had written.
"I relayed this information to the faculty and we agreed to participate in the process of students publishing books," Faulkner said.
Kindergarten-second grade and one third grade class wrote and published classbooks. One second grade class, and third-fifth grade classes wrote and published individual books.
"For the individual books, the students wrote on one page and illustrated on the next page – for a total of 16 pages," Faulkner said. "The kindergartners dictated what they wanted to say and a teacher or assistant wrote it, but they did their own illustrations. And most of the first and second graders did their own writing."
The students followed the writing process of pre-writing, revising, editing and writing the final draft.
"This involved a lot of patience on the part of the students and teachers," she said.
The final compositions were mailed to the publishing company in December.
Students who did individual books received one free copy with the opportunity to purchase reprints if desired. Classes that did Classbooks received one free book and the opportunity to purchase reprints.
"They are hardbound books and look really nice," said Faulkner. "This was an awesome, fun learning opportunity for the students at Oakland Heights."
