St. John’s Celebrates 10th Annual First Grade ‘Author's Day’

For students at , Author's Day is really memorable—memorable enough that, to celebrate 10 years of the event, the school asked its entire student body who have had an Author's Day to write about it, and they did.

Essays of their memories hung on the walls of the school lunchroom on Friday afternoon, where 60 first graders were having their own Author's Day experience: showing off the eight or so laminated, bound books that they wrote over the course of the year, and cheerfully signing autographs for their parents, friends and friends’ parents.

“I’m having a lot of fun signing autographs and stuff… signing all the autographs and having lots of fun,” said first-grader Conor Zech, who also wrote a mystery about missing ice cream. “I really like writing the books, and reading them.”

For the past decade, St. John’s first-graders have spent their school year writing and illustrating that series of thematic books, which teachers help edit and produce into professional-looking publications. Author's Day is the culmination of their experience.

For the 2011-2012 year, the students wrote about eight books, including “Summer Fun” (their summer experiences,) “If I Were President” (a fun hypothetical,) “Where’s the Spider?” (a “positional book”) and their own choice for when they were the class’ Author of the Week.

“The transition that they go through from how they enter—as really a kindergartener, getting into their first-grade life—and then the change that you can see in the books as they progress through the school year—is amazing,” said teacher Jackie Wehner, a founder of the Author's Day program.

“It’s become a tradition at St. John’s… They put these eight to 10 books in a box, and they still pull them out as a 14-year-old and read them because it brings back so many memories.”

Fellow first-grade teacher Rhonda Floros said that the big highlight is the students’ “First Grade Memories” book, which includes pictures of their year. She added that, beyond being fun, the project is terrific for the kids’ development.

“All year the message, the big push, is that you are a writer, your words mean something, it’s important to send out a message,” Floros said. “They really take pride in what they’re doing.”

But, of course, it’s a lot of fun, too.

“It’s fun to see other people looking at the books, and it’s fun signing the autographs,” said new young author Margot Sennett, who elected to write about her family and published an extra book about her sister. “You get to do lots of drawing and writing, and then you get a book and you get to read it!”