Kindergartners in Katy Barkow’s class at Eisenhower Elementary School will soon be published authors.

“We are publishing an alphabet book,” Barkow said on Wednesday, when Eisenhower hosted a noon USD 428 Board of Education meeting. “We’re in the middle of drafting and revising right now.” The activity has involved drawing, dictating and writing, as well as participating in shared research. The students looked at other alphabet books for inspiration, including “The Frog Alphabet Book,” “The Flower Alphabet Book,” and Dr. Suess’s “ABC - An Amazing Alphabet Book!”

The students are also learning some conventions of standard grammar, as well as capitalization, punctuation and spelling. The students shared some of their artwork and talked about the letters they researched. “O” is for “Owl,” “P” is for “Puppy,” and “I is for Igloo.” The word “Fox” appears twice, representing the letters “F” and “X.” Barkow shared what other educators know: X is a tough letter to teach because we don’t use the true pronunciation (/e/ follow by /ks/sound) at the beginning of words.

Students to be published authors

School board members heard building reports from each of the grade levels at Eisenhower and met Kalee Maneth, the teacher in charge of Eisenhower Elementary School STUCO, and two of her students.

They also heard from Kaitlyn Tuey and Megan McGuire, the teachers in the school’s two adaptive learning classrooms. They described how they work with students to help them communicate their basic needs. They work on fine motor skill activities and use adaptive equipment.

“We teach them in different ways,” McGuire said.

“A big thing for our kids is reinforcement,” Tuey added. Their presentation prompted board member Deanna Essmiller to comment, “I love your enthusiasm for what you do.”