Volunteer / Young Authors

Publishing at Brewster School

With both of my children, I enjoyed volunteering in their schools through their elementary years. One of my second grade volunteer activities was publishing stories written by the children. Here's a brief run-down of the process:

Each story is a multi-phase project and parent volunteers are a necessary part of the process:
The children write their stories. They review and polish the stories with their teachers.
A parent volunteer types the story, (either at home or at school), and sends it back to the school, (either printed or via e-mail to the child's teacher.)
The teacher will proof-read the typed story with the child.
If changes are needed, a request will be sent to the typist for revisions. If no changes are needed, the child will illustrate their masterpieces.
Finally the illustrated stories are bound (by another parent volunteer...) It is the goal of the school to have each second grade student have a book published by Young Author's Day in the spring.

Dear Volunteers

It is a wonderful educational activity for the children and the pride that radiates from their faces to have their own published book is priceless. As a parent, I know first hand, that those little books are "keepers."

Sometimes parents shy away from volunteering to publish because they have trouble with the formatting process. I have created Word templates that you can download to your computer to eliminate this problem.

My apologies to those who don't have Word...

With each hand-written story, you will receive a sheet similar to the one below.
As a typer, all you need to focus on is the top half.
I have made templates using Word that should make it easier to insert the text in the desired format...
If you click on the appropriate template below, you will download a pre-formatted word document that you can use to type the story.
Here is a brief set of instructions on inserting the text, finishing and formatting the stories.