Getting published: Hawthorne Elementary School students create book
Published 9:00 am Sunday, March 22, 2015
![Hawthorne Elementary School first-grader Arianna Stone looks at the book she and her classmates put together. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune](https://www.albertleatribune.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2015/03/0322.books01.jpg)
Hawthorne Elementary School first-grader Arianna Stone looks at the book she and her classmates put together. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune
Some students at Hawthorne Elementary School can now call themselves published authors after completing a special project this week.
For first-grade teacher Joan Boyenga’s class, the project involved the students picking out a book about an animal, reading that book and then filling out an organizer about what they read.
The students then wrote a page in their own words with facts about the animal they selected and drew a picture of that animal.
Boyenga said the students had to check for things such as periods, spaces and capitalization in their writing, and often they had to rewrite the reports.
After completing them and checking for errors, each report in Boyenga’s class was compiled into a book published by Studentreasures Publishing called “First Grade Informational Animal Reports.”
Boyenga and Hawthorne Principal Karen Zwolenski presented the finished books to the students on Thursday.
“I just get so excited because the curriculum makes it so easy to have everything flow together,” Boyenga said.
In first grade, the students learn about being an author and an illustrator, and making their own books is a perfect way to help them learn these concepts, she said. The project also promotes reading and writing.
Avery Mauer, 7, said he picked to learn more about skunks.
“It’s funny,” Mauer said about what he learned. He said the musk that skunks spray is a smelly, yellow liquid.
Student Arianna Stone said she learned about cats.
“Cats make good pets,”she said.
The book is strictly voluntary for the classrooms, but Boyenga said there are a handful of other teachers participating. Each teacher decided what would go in the book.
- Hawthorne Elementary School first-grader Arianna Stone looks at the book she and her classmates put together. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune
- First-grade teacher Joan Boyenga shows her students their finished book Thursday in their classroom at Hawthorne Elementary School. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune
- Kadence Springsteel, a student in Joan Boyenga’s first-grade class at Hawthorne Elementary School, flips through a finished copy of a book filled with the students’ own writing and illustrations. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune
- Students in Joan Boyenga’s first-grade class at Hawthorne Elementary School got to see their books that they helped put together for the first time in class Thursday. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune
- Kameron Behncke, left, and Cohen Drescher look at their finished books in their first-grade classroom Thursday at Hawthorne Elementary School. — Colleen Harrison/Albert Lea Tribune