Eighth-grade authors meet preschool audience
JACKSON TWP — Eighth-grade students at Ryan Gloyer Middle School got instant readers’ reactions Wednesday, March 1, when they delivered and read aloud the children’s books they created to youngsters in the Seneca Valley preschool program.
The books were delivered in two sessions 8:55 to 10:55 a.m. and 11:50 a.m. to 1:50 p.m. to the preschool classroom in Seneca Valley High School.
After the book delivery, the eighth-graders read their books to the preschoolers in Kara Andres’ class and stayed to help with the daily lesson plans.
Kayla Robinson, family and consumer sciences teacher at the school, collaborated with Angie Kotula, school librarian, during Robinson’s Personal Development course as students created children’s books to promote literacy. The book delivery was part of Read Across America Day.
Robinson said all 600 eighth-graders at Ryan Gloyer will go through the course, where they divide into teams to create, construct and illustrate a children’s book.
“Literacy is so important, and not just for certain age ranges,” Robinson said. “This helps promote the importance of literacy. And they can see the impact the books make working with the preschoolers.”
Robinson said the teams have six to 10 days to create a children’s book trying to use all the elements — illustrations, easy-to-understand storylines, concise vocabulary — gone over in the class.
“Writing a children’s book is so complex for the time frame,” Robinson said. “They have to be creative and bring out their strong suits.”
Kotula said she and Robinson select which eighth-graders’ books to send to Andres’ preschool class, where the 30 preschoolers and the high schoolers working with them as part of a high school child development course choose six favorites.
Those books — “Time to Fly,” "Josie the Jellyfish,“ ”Bradley the Broken Pencil,“ ”Peggy and the Stolen Eraser,“ ”Pluto and the Planets“ and ”Tom-Ato Elementary“ — were read to the preschoolers in the morning and afternoon sessions.
“We’re looking for interesting elements, a literary, interesting plot, the characters, the problem to be solved and plays on words,” Kotula said. “We’re also asking them to think about the audience, and then they want to teach with those books.”
Robinson said her eight-graders practiced reading their creations and prepared questions to ask the preschoolers ahead of Wednesday’s delivery.
Ella Reichenbach, Leah Pieszak and Dom Hoffmaster were on the team that created “Time to Fly,” a story of tropical birds. Ella and Leah did the writing, Leah the illustrating, and Dom said he provided the inspiration.
“Once we came up with an idea, it was pretty easy,” Dom said.
Ella said it was nice to have been selected as one of the winning books by their young audience, but the win wouldn’t boost their grade.
Robinson said this was the first year books from her classes were read to the preschoolers.
Read Across America Day is conducted annually on the school day closest to March 2 each year. The day promotes reading for children.
The popular children’s author Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) was born on March 2, and so the planners of the holiday wanted it to be near his birthday. The National Education Association was one of the main backers of the idea to have a special day to promote reading, especially in children.
