Junior publishers make a splash

Seamless classroom crossover has resulted in a group of Yahl Primary School students set to launch their own book on November 14 at Robe with hopes high other launch events will be part of a book tour for the budding writers, illustrators and publishers.

The project all started with the four Year 6 students, who were the school’s Youth Environment Leaders Program (YELP) representatives in the Landscape SA program designed to engage students in activities that can potentially have a lasting impact on the health of their local environment or community.

The program invites Year 6 students to participate and can lead on to other environmental programs when the students move into high school.

It was at first YELP forum held at Naracoorte this year where teams were asked to brainstorm what they thought were the biggest environmental challenges facing their schools and local communities and that’s where the Yahl students, with the assistance of literacy and art teacher Mel Holtz, started to shape their team’s project.

“We recognised that litter, kids trampling new plants, and breaking trees and branches were of concern to the team,” Ms Holtz said. “When it came down to it, it seemed to be that kids just weren’t caring. We decided to make a book to try to get kids to care more and be more mindful of the impact they can have on the natural environment.”

The idea saw the students shape their ideas in their outdoor classroom as part of their YELP sessions and then refine them in the indoor classroom to create their book, titled ‘Who Will Help?’.

“The kids were excited about the idea of being ‘real authors’ and decided this was a great way to spread their message,” Ms Holtz said.

“Students researched local flora and fauna to include in our story and they designed characters, brainstormed plot ideas and character names together.”

Each wee the students would meet and change, rework and edit the story, also tapping into the expertise of published authors, as well as working with Limestone Coast flora and fauna expert Uncle Ken Jones to develop their ideas.

“We worked on the illustrations and planned the layout of the story together and we approached local industries for support and were lucky to get sponsorship from OneFortyOne which meant we could print some really lovely copies of the book,” Ms Holtz said.

Eli, Ethan, Pippa and Tyson were the four members of the Yahl YELP team and the driving force behind the book.

“I’ve always been such a plant lover and thought it would be good to give back to the community in a way that would be recognised and worthwhile,” Eli said. “I realised that the YELP program would be a good start to caring for the environment”.

Ethan also wanted to turn his interest in the environment into something more meaningful.

“I noticed that kids were destroying our ecosystem so I ran for school captain and I was then put into the YELP team,” he said.

The lessons were similar for Pippa and Tyson.

“The main things I have learned is that everything is connected in one way or another and how important it is to look after ecosystems,” Pippa said. “We can refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle”.

“I have learned that ecosystems need to be taken care of and not littered by people,” Tyson said. “We can help improve the environment by not littering.

Eli, Ethan and Pippa were all hands on with the illustrations, especially the character creations, while Tyson was in charge of the story location and book layout.

The official book launch will be the YELP Forum at Robe on November 14 and of the 10 published books, at least one will end up in the library.