Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – Story time took on a whole new meaning last Wednesday as students in Amy White’s Business Technology Applications class at the Presque Isle Regional Career and Technical Center read to children who attend SAD 1’s Childcare Education Center.
However, they weren’t the familiar stories the children have heard before – they were children’s books the students created themselves.
“They’re studying a specific module of business education … digital photography,” said White, “so we decided to incorporate literacy in our vocational class. With digital photography, we knew we could easily build children’s books to share with early childhood to do a cross-platform study with another class of kids.
“It was an idea that I captured from a children’s story, “Stranger in the Woods,” which is a photographic story,” said White. “My students were told to include more pictures than words, and I tried to remind them that their audience was 2- and 3-year-old children and they would need to be able to hold their attention.”
The high-schoolers began working on their stories the first of December. The stories ranged from how to build a gingerbread house to the processing of potatoes.
“They took all the photos themselves either with digital cameras they had at home or with cameras that were purchased through a Carl Perkins grant,” said White. “They then came up with the text, and we inserted them into Microsoft Word and printed them out.”
The children’s books were then bound by Brian Ross at Presque Isle High School.
White said she was pleased with the students’ creativity.
“They did quite well,” she said. “They all had their own unique ideas which represented their personalities a bit. It was a project I think they enjoyed, and saw the validity of what they were doing.”
Senior Spencer Deschene created a book about his dog’s first day at his new house.
“I was just thinking about what I could take pictures of easily at my house, and I figured my dog would be the easiest thing,” said Deschene, noting that he spent a little over a month working on the book. “We didn’t find out we had to read to the little kids until about halfway through, and my first thought was, ‘Oh god,’ but it’s important to help kids get interested in reading, so it was fun.”
Daniel Butt, a junior, relied on his Christmas tree for inspiration.
“I took some ornaments off my Christmas tree and did the first thing I could think of,” he said. “Sans Holo [a Hans Solo figurine] comes home and his wife is missing. I used my cat as the beast, and Sans goes looking for his wife.”
Butt said he enjoyed reading to the young children.
“I think it helps show them that kids my age aren’t all that bad and what they have to look forward to as a teen-ager,” he said. “It was terrifying at first having to read to them, but you get used to it. I’m the youngest in my family and everyone is off at college, so I’m not around little kids that much, but it was fun.”
Loretta Clark, coordinator of the Childcare Education Center, said she was happy that the high-schoolers came into the center.
“We like to expose our children to as much literacy as we can,” said Clark, “and a lot of times, by having an older high school student read to them, they’re able to keep their attention a little bit longer because it’s a different face.
“Reading to the little ones can also build up the high school students’ confidence,” she said. “While it’s something many of them haven’t done, it can help increase their confidence, so it’s a win-win situation. It’s also a good way to show the students that it takes patience to work with children.”
Clark said the exercise served as a teaching lesson for the small children.
“It’s important to expose them to as much print as we can, and this is one way to show them the right way to handle a book, to learn the title and author’s name, how to read from left to right, and just have an overall appreciation for books and hopefully be lifelong readers,” she said. “It was nice having the students come in. It was wonderful not only for our staff, but for the students, as well. It might even spark an interest in a student to go into a career with young children later on in life.”
This was the first time White assigned the children’s book project to her students.
“I absolutely want to do it again,” she said. “I hope my students see the value of working with little children, and what they’re doing for work is important and can be something that can be published at some point.”
