New Richmond High School students will present children’s books they have written as part of of the sophomore English class writing project to elementary school students at New Richmond Elementary Tuesday, Oct. 7.
“We do a children's book writing project, which gives students the chance to write and publish their own children's books, written for a specific audience,” said NRHS language arts teacher Sue Griffin, who credits the Ohio Writer's Project and Writer's Notebooks. “The books are absolutely amazing.”
Prior to writing their books, the NRHS students studied the structure of a narrative, including the five parts of the plot line, and then mapped out plot lines for three short stories which are read in class.
In the planning stages of the project, students write several entries in their Writer's Notebooks, including what their favorite book was when they were a child, their favorite character from a book, movie, TV show or cartoon, the most important lessons they think children should learn and what they think are the best and worst things about being a little kid.
“We also read a published children's book each day (I selected books that I thought were unique and/or demonstrated special characteristics) and then we talked about what made them good books for children,” said Griffin. “Students kept a list of all those good things and, in many cases, used that list when they created their own books.”
The books are also a kind of art project and we spent some time talking about how to make them visually pleasing.
Students illustrated their books by printing their own images on the computer or with hand-drawn illustrations.
“The books are an amazing collection of student work, “ said Griffin. “Original characters come to life in stories that are sometimes funny, sometimes educational, sometimes touching and sometimes just plain cute.”
After reading books to children at NRE, the books will be displayed at the high school library.