This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Elementary Students Publish Books in Friend's Honor

This week's Whiz Kids are from a first-grade class at Atwater Elementary, where each child wrote and published their own book.

Around this same time last year, one classroom of Atwater Elementary kindergarten students were working on writing stories and publishing their tales into books. This year, their class missed an important piece.

The Publishing Center at Atwater is known as the "Jackson Knoernschild Publishing Center," named in honor of classmate Jackson Knoernschild after he passed away from a brain tumor last April. Thursday, a first-grade Atwater class held an authors' celebration, with 23 students writing their own stories, and then publishing them as a class. Complete with hard covers and spiral bindings, each student wrote a book with a story, illustration, "about the author" section and a page for reviews.

Publishing center volunteer Deborah Wilk addressed the group about the significance of the project.

Find out what's happening in Shorewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

β€œPart of what makes this so meaningful is not only the sincere accomplishments of these students, but the fact that the publishing center is named after one of their fellow students who died last year, Jackson Knoernschild," she said. "Jackson was an inspiration to those who were with him, and it is really nice to be able to honor his memory in this way by publishing a book.”

Jackson was an enthusiastic writer, and donations were made in his honor toward the center.

Find out what's happening in Shorewoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Parents, siblings, teachers, Atwater Principal Timothy Kenney and Supt. Blane McCann were there on Thursday to celebrate the authors. McCann expressed his sincere appreciation for the efforts of the students, teachers and parent volunteers in creating these works, and hoped the rest of the school would be encouraged to take part in such a quality learning experience.

During the celebration, the children excitedly read their books aloud to their parents, fellow students, teachers and siblings. The room was full of proud authors, and all were encouraged to give feedback and comment on each other’s books on a special page in the back.

The writing workshop process at the schoolΒ is employed in first grade with the books. The class used a step-by-step process in producing the books. Students were asked to create a picture in their minds and think of a story that really happened. Quick sketches began the combination of story and image, which are then followed by words, then edited, then illustrated with more meaningful images, and edited again. Several parent volunteers contributed to the editing and conferencing process, including Deborah Wilk, Diedre Prosen, Mike Oldani and Laura Drake. This process included one-on-one work with students at each level of the book, even when they went to the β€œpress” in the publishing center, where each is covered and spiral bound.

Teacher Amy Sedlar stressed the significance of the effort.

β€œIt’s a lot of work, and takes a long time to create each book, so each student here should be really proud of the work,”  she said.

She added this project is a significant way to "really get to know the kids on a deeper level, because of what they choose to write about."Β 

One student's choice to write about his close relationship with his grandmother,Β for example, and another’sΒ exploration of his celebrating Hannukah and Christmas, were issues Sedlar wouldn’t naturally explore with her students.

"It’s a way to look at relationships between students and within their families and social circles that helps the whole class understand each other,” Sedlar said.

The students will get to take home their books this week.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Shorewood