Schools
Park School Students become Novelists
Park School has more than a few budding writers in Mrs. Sekyra's sixth-grade class!
Park School Sixth-graders have the 'Write Stuff'
Students in Sherrie Sekyra's language arts class at Park School in District 46 not only met a challenge to write a 3,000-word novel in 30 days, they each surpassed it.
The students recently completed the National Novel Writing Contest (NaNoWriMo), which is the world's largest youth writing event. The class had a "Thank Goodness it's Over" celebration on Dec. 14 where they enjoyed treats and read excerpts from their novels in front of parents.
The 25 students wrote a collective 243,894 words, a great deal more than the 75,000-word minimum total. Two students even wrote more than 30,000 words each.
Find out what's happening in Grayslakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"In all my years of teaching, I've never seen kids so enthusiastic about writing," said Sekyra.
The students really enjoyed the contest, said Sekyra, because they felt a sense of ownership over their writing and set personal goals for themselves.
Find out what's happening in Grayslakewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Students wrote during a portion of their class time as well as outside of school. Sekyra said she could track the students' writing time with a Google doc and was amazed to see that many were writing not only after school and in the evenings, but before school, too.
"This class is just wonderful," said Sekyra.
The imaginative students' novels include titles like "The Secret Life of the New Girl," "Reign of Burgers," "Hurricane Sandy Hits," and "Unicorn War."
Each of the students will be able to have five paperback books published for free through the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program.
Here is a list of Sherri Sekyra's sixth-grade students:
Josh Adisumarta
Phillippe Bui
Matthew Chor
Jack Chum
Amanda Dominguez
Jolina Ferrer
Jesse Garduno
Casey Joves
Youjin Kim
Elisa Koshy
Lauren Lendvay
Callie Luczak
Zachery Luger
Tyler Marson
Andrew Maurice
Alex Nelson
Maya Roytman
Jake Ryan
Ty Sato
Maxim Sizov
Gallagher Snow
Gautami Sonarikar
Aandal Sridas
Nick Tarnowski
Nina Tovar
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.