Friday, Mar. 4, 2005

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McIntosh sophomores become authors

By MICHAEL BOYLAN
mboylan@TheCitizenNews.com

A piece of advice that all aspiring writers receive at some point in their lives is the suggestion to “write what you know.” The sophomore students in gifted English at McIntosh High School got that advice from teacher Dawn Burnette at the beginning of the year and what they knew best was surviving their freshman year of high school.

“Last summer I was thinking of what to do with my students this year,” said Burnette. “I wanted them to do something more authentic, writing-wise, and wanted them to write for a real audience and have a real product.” Burnette learned about the process of writing a book with her Daily Grammar Practice teaching method and thought her students would be able to learn a lot about the process as well. In addition, the students also met eight Georgia Performance Standards through the project including using research and technology to support writing, demonstrating understanding and control of the rules of the English language and participating in student-to-teacher, student-to-student and group verbal interactions among others.

Each of the 63 students in the three gifted English classes was told to write an essay about their freshman year. Little did they know that those essays would be the starting point for a much larger project, a book called “High School 101: Freshman Survival Guide.” Though the students still did all of the regular parts of sophomore gifted English, such as reading “Julius Caesar,” one day a week was reserved as “book day.”

After all of the essays were written, the students went through them all and highlighted the parts they felt were especially good. These portions of the essay were then organized into chapters such as “Organization and Time Management,” “Personal Well Being,” and Upperclassmen” among others. All of the students contributed to the writing and editing process and also learned about marketing, publishing, research, public speaking and web site development through this project.

“One of the challenges was that this was project involved collaboration with the other classes,” said Burnette. “The book reads as though one person wrote it though. the students worked hard on controlling voice.”

The students favorite part of the process, according to at least some of them, was polling the other students at school on various subjects and taking the pictures to illustrate certain chapters. Their least favorite part was the editing process, though they still enjoyed it because many of the students hadn’t read all of the chapters of the book until that part. One student remarked that creating the bibliography wasn’t too much fun either.

One of the other interesting parts of the project involved the students writing business letters to individuals for help in advertising, funding or other areas. Several students wrote to Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, thinking a piece on the project would certainly help draw attention to the book. They have yet to receive a reply, but they aren’t discouraged. Grant Stivers got a reply to his letter to Queen Elizabeth II though. He wrote asking if she would endorse the book with a foreword and the Queen’s Senior Correspondence Officer replied with an incredibly polite denial.

On Tuesday, the students gathered in the school’s Media Center and the back portion of the room became a publishing center. The students worked on putting the books together which included a lot of laminating, cutting and binding. The students will receive a hardcover copy of the book and the paperback versions will be on sale at the school, at Omega Books in Peachtree City and on the students’ Web site, www.g-ridepress.com. A number of students will be signing copies of the book at Omega Books tomorrow from 1-3 p.m.

“High School 101: Freshman Survival Guide” costs $14.95. Proceeds will go to the gifted/honors English program to fund future projects as well as to the Ethan Peterson Cancer Fund.

For more information on the book, visit www.g-ridepress.com.