Post by Marc LeVine on Feb 9, 2007 10:58:20 GMT -5
Pupils find creative voice with help from author
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer
EFF GRANIT staff Children's author Betty Tatham helps fourth-graders Fernando Tablas, 11, and Emanuel Lundy, 10, hone their writing skills at the Freehold Learning Center.
FREEHOLD - Children make up elaborate stories all the time - sometimes to the chagrin of their teachers.
On Jan. 26, students at the Freehold Learning Center elementary school, Dutch Lane Road, had a chance to make up stories and earn a pat on the back for doing so. Pupils were treated to a visit from award-winning children's author Betty Tatham, 70, who spent time at the school talking, mentoring and teaching youngsters in the art of creative writing.
The program, called The "Write" Author, was available to the children through a $1,500 grant provided by the Freehold Borough Educational Foundation. Librarian Joan Murphy applied for the grant in order to enhance the students' writing skills and their performance on standardized tests.
Murphy said Tatham's visit allowed the pupils to interact and meet with a children's author, to have a chance to learn how an author conducts and verifies research, and to gain a better understanding of the writing process and thus improve their own writing skills.
Using her own stories like "Penguin Chick" and "Baby Sea Otter" as examples, Tatham did not have to coax the children to write; the workshop was an opportunity to use honest and pure imagination, as only children can do.
Tatham, who lives in Holland, Pa., started writing children's books in 2000. Her first book, "Penguin Chick," won the Best Children's Book of the Year award from the Bank Street College of Education. The National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council both selected "Penguin Chick" for the national traveling exhibition Children's Science Book Fair 2003.
Tatham said she was struck with the desire to write a children's book after being in charge of purchasing books in her position as executive director of the YMCA of Bucks County. Pa. While serving as the YMCA's executive director she crafted a program called Early Academic Intervention in 1994. The goal of the program was to help children do well in school.
"Reading all of the books I had to buy for the program spurred my interest and inspired me to want to write my own children's book," she said.
Tatham took her desire to author Wendy Pfeffer, of Pennington, and got the author's help in realizing her goal.
Tatham is now busy with a work of fiction that was inspired by a newspaper story she read about a young cougar with cataracts who lives in a zoo. Her visit to Freehold saw her reach out to the children for help on that story.
Tatham read the students the first page of her book about the blind cougar and then told them their job was to take up the story where she left off.
She prefaced her request with a workshop on the important elements of writing, She discussed the five most important elements: who, what, when, where and why. She told the children every story must have a hero and the hero, whether it is an animal or a person, must solve the problem.
"If this is a story about a bad storm," Tatham told the children, "then something bad has to happen. If the sun just comes out, there is no story. And your hero must solve this problem.
"Why should we care about the problem?" she said. "You need to make your reader care and you have to give them a reason to do that. If you do not grab your reader in the first page, even the first paragraph, you won't have any readers," Tatham said.
Tatham explained the technique she used in "Penguin Chick" to "grab" her readers.
"A fierce wind howls," she read from her manuscript. "It whips snow across the ice."
She also introduced her hero, a female emperor penguin.
The children sat attentively as Tatham spoke, their pads attached to clipboards, ready to begin the assignment of putting their pens to paper to create more of what Tatham had already started in her story about the cougar.
The students were full of ideas as a group, identifying Jenny (the hero) and the problem easily. They realized the cougar had cataracts and $500 was needed to pay Dr. Brown for an operation which would remove the cataracts and allow the young cougar to see. However, the story had another problem - Dr. Brown would only be at the zoo for another two weeks.
Imagination blanketed the room as the pupils worked in pairs, brainstorming about how to get the money for the operation that would save the cougar's sight.
Ashley Corella, 8, and Yurian DeJesus, 8, both in third grade, decided to have Jenny organize a car wash to raise money for the operation. In order to "make something bad happen," Ashley and Yurian arranged for a car to get "smacked" up in the car wash. The characters ended up paying a mechanic to repair the car, losing all the money they made for the operation.
This spurred the pupils' imaginations to come up with yet another problem, holding the reader's interest.
Dylan Koehler, 9, and Jake Curry, 9, both in third grade, had Jenny organize a bake sale and a lemonade sale. Dylan and Jake created an even more exciting conflict for their story.
Rather than having two weeks to prepare, they had Dr. Brown leaving the next day. This development cut the deadline for coming up with the money to 4:30 the next day. The story depicted the excitement as the young writers had their hero race against time to make the money for the operation.
Many of the children had a chance to read their pieces while others looked on and listened with interest.
Sharon Hennesey, whose third-graders attended the program, and Josh Goldberg, whose fourth-graders were in the program, both said they intended to encourage the students to continue writing their stories in their creative workshop classes.
BY CLARE MARIE CELANO
Staff Writer
EFF GRANIT staff Children's author Betty Tatham helps fourth-graders Fernando Tablas, 11, and Emanuel Lundy, 10, hone their writing skills at the Freehold Learning Center.
FREEHOLD - Children make up elaborate stories all the time - sometimes to the chagrin of their teachers.
On Jan. 26, students at the Freehold Learning Center elementary school, Dutch Lane Road, had a chance to make up stories and earn a pat on the back for doing so. Pupils were treated to a visit from award-winning children's author Betty Tatham, 70, who spent time at the school talking, mentoring and teaching youngsters in the art of creative writing.
The program, called The "Write" Author, was available to the children through a $1,500 grant provided by the Freehold Borough Educational Foundation. Librarian Joan Murphy applied for the grant in order to enhance the students' writing skills and their performance on standardized tests.
Murphy said Tatham's visit allowed the pupils to interact and meet with a children's author, to have a chance to learn how an author conducts and verifies research, and to gain a better understanding of the writing process and thus improve their own writing skills.
Using her own stories like "Penguin Chick" and "Baby Sea Otter" as examples, Tatham did not have to coax the children to write; the workshop was an opportunity to use honest and pure imagination, as only children can do.
Tatham, who lives in Holland, Pa., started writing children's books in 2000. Her first book, "Penguin Chick," won the Best Children's Book of the Year award from the Bank Street College of Education. The National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council both selected "Penguin Chick" for the national traveling exhibition Children's Science Book Fair 2003.
Tatham said she was struck with the desire to write a children's book after being in charge of purchasing books in her position as executive director of the YMCA of Bucks County. Pa. While serving as the YMCA's executive director she crafted a program called Early Academic Intervention in 1994. The goal of the program was to help children do well in school.
"Reading all of the books I had to buy for the program spurred my interest and inspired me to want to write my own children's book," she said.
Tatham took her desire to author Wendy Pfeffer, of Pennington, and got the author's help in realizing her goal.
Tatham is now busy with a work of fiction that was inspired by a newspaper story she read about a young cougar with cataracts who lives in a zoo. Her visit to Freehold saw her reach out to the children for help on that story.
Tatham read the students the first page of her book about the blind cougar and then told them their job was to take up the story where she left off.
She prefaced her request with a workshop on the important elements of writing, She discussed the five most important elements: who, what, when, where and why. She told the children every story must have a hero and the hero, whether it is an animal or a person, must solve the problem.
"If this is a story about a bad storm," Tatham told the children, "then something bad has to happen. If the sun just comes out, there is no story. And your hero must solve this problem.
"Why should we care about the problem?" she said. "You need to make your reader care and you have to give them a reason to do that. If you do not grab your reader in the first page, even the first paragraph, you won't have any readers," Tatham said.
Tatham explained the technique she used in "Penguin Chick" to "grab" her readers.
"A fierce wind howls," she read from her manuscript. "It whips snow across the ice."
She also introduced her hero, a female emperor penguin.
The children sat attentively as Tatham spoke, their pads attached to clipboards, ready to begin the assignment of putting their pens to paper to create more of what Tatham had already started in her story about the cougar.
The students were full of ideas as a group, identifying Jenny (the hero) and the problem easily. They realized the cougar had cataracts and $500 was needed to pay Dr. Brown for an operation which would remove the cataracts and allow the young cougar to see. However, the story had another problem - Dr. Brown would only be at the zoo for another two weeks.
Imagination blanketed the room as the pupils worked in pairs, brainstorming about how to get the money for the operation that would save the cougar's sight.
Ashley Corella, 8, and Yurian DeJesus, 8, both in third grade, decided to have Jenny organize a car wash to raise money for the operation. In order to "make something bad happen," Ashley and Yurian arranged for a car to get "smacked" up in the car wash. The characters ended up paying a mechanic to repair the car, losing all the money they made for the operation.
This spurred the pupils' imaginations to come up with yet another problem, holding the reader's interest.
Dylan Koehler, 9, and Jake Curry, 9, both in third grade, had Jenny organize a bake sale and a lemonade sale. Dylan and Jake created an even more exciting conflict for their story.
Rather than having two weeks to prepare, they had Dr. Brown leaving the next day. This development cut the deadline for coming up with the money to 4:30 the next day. The story depicted the excitement as the young writers had their hero race against time to make the money for the operation.
Many of the children had a chance to read their pieces while others looked on and listened with interest.
Sharon Hennesey, whose third-graders attended the program, and Josh Goldberg, whose fourth-graders were in the program, both said they intended to encourage the students to continue writing their stories in their creative workshop classes.