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Take STudenT Work Beyond The ClaSSroom This all-new second edition of Classroom Publishing: A Practical Guide for
Teachers will help educators take their students’ work beyond the class-
room, enhancing literacy, building new skills, and encouraging students
to take pride in sharing their work with a wide audience. Intended as
a resource guide for K–12 educators and beyond, Classroom Publish-
ing demystifies the publishing process for all education levels. This new
edition is the perfect guide for teachers who want to integrate publish-
ing into their curriculum and includes dozens of real-life examples from
classrooms across the country. This book discusses new projects, as well
as tips from educators about how to sustain more traditional long-term
publishing projects like school newspapers and literary magazines. Ad-
ditionally, this edition provides resource materials for finding funding,
planning projects, and making eco-friendly choices.
The firST ediTion of ClaSSroom PuBliShing WaS WriTTen in 1992 by Laurie King and Dennis Stovall. In 2001, Dennis Stovall founded
Ooligan Press, the premier student-run publishing house in the United
States, basing the curriculum around the concept of classroom pub-
lishing. Itself a project from the classroom, the second edition was
written and produced by the graduate students of Ooligan Press.
1
The Publishing Process
Every book, magazine, zine, or website is deliv-
ered to the reader via a process that involves a
number of skills and a variety of people. The
publishing process can be as simple as an author
self-publishing a pamphlet or book, or as com-
plex as a large publishing house whose hundreds
of employees perform very specific jobs. As
these pages will show, teaching the stages of
publishing is a curriculum in and of itself that
can reinforce an existing writing curriculum by
providing applications that go beyond the class-
room, teaching students skills that they will use
in non-school settings, and offering new ways
to engage all students in the process. A list of
suggested classroom activities accompanies each
section of the process.
2 Classroom Publishing: a PraCtiCal guide For teaChers
Acquisitions: Generating and Selecting Content
What to publish? Professional publish-
ing houses acquire manuscripts from
authors; periodicals often ask for sub-
missions or have a staff that generates
the content. School publications, such as
the literary magazine and the newspaper,
follow both of these models. Each pub-
lication establishes its own internal standards of quality and selects
content based on an understanding of its audience. When publish-
ing with students it’s equally important to establish standards of
quality and to clearly identify the audience. Involve students in the
selection process by helping them evaluate student writing using cri-
teria that they developed. Putting students in the roles of publish-
ers, authors, and editors can invigorate the writing process by giving
them a stronger sense of audience and greater purpose.
Acquisitions Activities • As a persuasive writing assignment, have students
write query letters in which they pitch imaginary novels
to publishers.
• Ask students to search Creative Commons (http://
creativecommons.org) and have each find an image to
complement the class’s current reading assignment.
• Have students include all the proper citations and
present their selected images along with a paragraph
discussing the connection of the image to the reading.
3OOligan Press | httP://OOligan.Pdx.edu/
Editing
Editing has multiple levels: developmen-
tal editing, copyediting, fact-checking,
and proofreading. Teaching students the
purpose and goal of each level can provide
additional structure to the writing process,
as each level of editing requires a different
skill. Developmental editing needs a strong
reader who can interact well with the text. Copyediting needs a strong
writer who understands style. Factchecking and proofreading both
need meticulous readers and writers. It’s important to train students
at each level, but it is also useful to allow them to specialize. This will
show students what skills are needed at each stage of editing, let them
value their peers who have those skills, and see how they benefit from
having capable editors work with their writing at each level.
Editing Activities • Have students write stories in 500 words, then re-write
them in 250 words, then re-write them in 100 words.
Finally, challenge them to reduce them to fifty words or
less. Ask them to identify what was cut first, what was
cut last, and to explain what differences each cut made
in their stories.
• To teach fact-checking, have students edit a piece of
writing that is free of grammatical errors but full of
factual errors. How does this type of editing differ from
others? What are good resources for checking facts?
4 Classroom Publishing: a PraCtiCal guide For teaChers
Layout and Design
This stage is made easier with comput-
ers. There are sophisticated software
programs, such as Adobe InDesign,
which are industry standards in the
publishing world. However, a basic
word processing program can provide
professional-looking type and a digital
copy of the students’ writing, allowing the designer to play with the
text on the page. Scanners can be used to include digitized student
artwork. If no computers are available at all, a manuscript can be
reproduced directly onto the page by hand, just as it was done for
hundreds of years before the invention of the printing press.
Design Activities • Using a word processor, have students design a sample
piece of text using three different combinations of
typefaces, leading, and alignment. Which do they find
to be the most readable? Why?
• In small groups, have students design an advertisement
on poster board for a classic book. Ask students to
explain their design choices.
• Explore the differences between the designs of web
and print publications by having students discuss and
write about the design of publications that have a print
and web edition.
5OOligan Press | httP://OOligan.Pdx.edu/
Production
This part of the process is often con-
tracted out by professional publish-
ers who don’t have the means to
produce thousands of copies of a
book. For classroom publishers with
funding, production involves send-
ing files electronically to a printer
who will both print and bind as many copies as needed. How-
ever, if there is only to be one copy of a student’s book pro-
duced, and time allows, there are some real rewards that can be
gained by bringing the production into the classroom. Students
can personalize their books by writing front-end material, like
introductions, editors’ notes, and dedications. The type of art
available to single editions is more varied as well, and students
feel an even greater sense of ownership of the final product.
Printing and Production Activities • Install a page-imposition freeware program such as
Cheap Imposter on a computer in your classroom.
Teach students how to print their work in booklet form
with four pages of text on a single piece of paper. This
activity will also save paper, toner, and money.
• Have students research new ways of reading books
(such as reading online or on Kindles) and discuss how
this might impact the future of book production.
6 Classroom Publishing: a PraCtiCal guide For teaChers
Marketing, Sales, and Distribution: Expanding the Audience
In the publishing world this stage is all
about getting books to their audiences.
This usually includes generating
buzz by getting media coverage,
having promotional events featuring
authors, and selling the product to
generate capital for the next project.
For classroom publishing projects, the amount of marketing is
relative to the size of your print run. For single-copy editions,
this might be an in-class “Book Fair,” or possibly an event in the
library where student work can be put on display. For larger print
runs, this could involve launch events in conjunction with local
bookstores, writing press releases announcing the publication
of the book, advertising in the school and local community,
or an author signing at a sales table in the lunchroom.
Marketing Activities • Look at marketing for a variety of products other than
books (e.g. movies, cereal boxes, etc.). What aspects of
the ad campaign work for these products? What aspects
don’t? Can any of these methods be applied to book
publishing?
• Teach students how to use a web site such as
Amazon.com to find book recommendations. An
activity could include writing a book review and either
publishing it on the site or bringing it to class.
7OOligan Press | httP://OOligan.Pdx.edu/
Garden Cookbook
Students use the harvest from their class garden to create recipes
and publish a cookbook that they sell at the local farmers’ market.
Roberta Guarnieri of Kentwood Elementary School in Los An-
geles, California, had a large garden and butterfly and bird habitat
where students learned about sustaining local wildlife. With such a
large space at her disposal, Roberta decided to grow vegetables with
her fifth-grade class and write and publish a vegetarian cookbook
with recipes that did not require electricity or gas energy to prepare.
When planning a project, it’s important to consider how the content and design can influence each other for maximum usability. A unique two-ring binding that mimics a set of recipe cards was the perfect design option for this cookbook. Image courtesy of Roberta Guarnieri.
8 Classroom Publishing: a PraCtiCal guide For teaChers
Historical Fiction Digital Stories
Dawn Hawkins at Tiger-
ville Elementary School
in Taylors, South Caro-
lina, put another twist on
digital stories by integrat-
ing the project into her
social studies curriculum.
Dawn’s third, fourth, and
fifth graders studied and
read about standard his-
tory topics, then assumed
the first-person voice of a
character from their read-
ings and wrote pieces of historical fiction, which they illustrated
with images, background music, and voice-overs in MovieMaker.
Although the stories were fiction, they had to include a certain
amount of factual content.
“I tell them I don’t want a list of facts, I want a story told from
the perspective of your character… and within that story, they tell
me facts,” Dawn said. For example, in a story about a message that
was being delivered from camp to camp during the Revolutionary
War, certain information would be factual, but the details could be
improvised. “They might make up that it’s a rainy day or that an
accident happened,” she said, “but anything like the date and the
content of the message needs to be accurate.”
“For the visual learners, working with the pictures really helps them, and the auditory learners are usually the ones who love the voice-over the most, and my kinesthetic learners get the hands on work of constructing the digital story.”
9OOligan Press | httP://OOligan.Pdx.edu/
Illustrations can add another dimension to a published text and engage artistic students who might not be as excited about the writing process. A sample spread from a gamebook about exploring the treasures of ancient Egypt shows how visuals can be easily integrated. Image courtesy of Dave Cooper.
Dawn’s students wrote their stories first, then searched for images
and audio content to accompany the text. The diverse tasks the stu-
dents had to complete to finish the project catered to the needs of
all learning styles. “For the visual learners, working with the pictures
really helps them, and the auditory learners are usually the ones who
love the voice-over the most, and my kinesthetic learners get the
hands on work of constructing the digital story,” she said. When
the stories were complete, parents and other members of the school
community were invited to the classroom for a movie showing, and
copies of the stories were kept in the classrooms for future use.
10 Classroom Publishing: a PraCtiCal guide For teaChers
Math Books
Fractions guide the story in students’ math-based children’s books.
Roberta Guarnieri, a fifth-grade teacher in Kentwood Elementary
in Los Angeles, California, was often confronted by middle and
high school teachers asking: “Can’t you elementary teachers teach
fractions? We’re still teaching them [to students].” In response to
these comments, Roberta decided to remedy these complaints by
taking a different approach to teaching fractions. Roberta had her
students write a story and publish a book based on word problems
that used fractions to guide the plot… Students presented their
Classroom publishing projects can be used to complement any curriculum. Students proudly show off Math Curse, which teaches kids how to use fractions using fun word problems. Image courtesy of Roberta Guarnieri.
11OOligan Press | httP://OOligan.Pdx.edu/
books in two ways: first, by speaking about their books in front of
their class. Roberta set up a chair in the middle of the classroom
and had each group share the books they’d written. Roberta also
sent her students to fourth-grade classrooms to read their books
to younger students, which gave the younger students a preview
of a project they’ll do the next year and provided valuable public
speaking experience for the fifth graders. Roberta said that when
her students completed the project, “They didn’t feel like they were
doing math. They enjoyed this learning experience.”
International Children’s Books
Students make books that are used to teach English to impover-
ished children around the globe.
Special Education teacher Lisa
Sanford estimated that nine out of
ten students in her English class
of ninth through twelfth graders
at Northwest Secondary School in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had never
read a whole book. When she
told them they would be making
books that would be used to teach
English to children in Uganda,
they didn’t believe her. “They
“To participate in Books of Hope, Lisa applied for a grant to purchase a small color printer and ink cartridges for her classroom. … They couldn’t believe their teacher would do something special for them.”
12 Classroom Publishing: a PraCtiCal guide For teaChers
A youth in Uganda reads a book created by students from Wisconsin. Books of Hope connects students across the world, putting handmade books into the hands of those in third-world countries who have little access to reading material. Image courtesy of Abha Thakhar, Books of Hope.
immediately said, ‘We can’t do a book.’ I had to work hard to get
past that,” she said. The work paid off when each student finished
a picture book that was delivered to Books of Hope, a nonprofit
organization that distributes student-made books to children in
impoverished countries. Knowing the books would make a dif-
ference in the lives of other children increased Lisa’s students’
empathy and motivated them to overcome their low expectations.
The project gave her students a sense of pride and accomplish-
ment that was rare in the low-income area where she taught. Not
unlike the children in Uganda, many of Lisa’s students faced
poverty and violence in their daily lives. To participate in Books
of Hope, Lisa applied for a grant to purchase a small color printer
and ink cartridges for her classroom. The printer, which was used
to print the final books, impressed her students, who weren’t used
to getting special atten-
tion, Lisa said. “They
couldn’t believe their
teacher would do some-
thing special for them.”
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not have an established relation-ship with our distributor, Ingram
Publisher Services.
For information about our edu-cational discounts, or to place an
order, please contact us at [email protected].
ISBN 978-1-932010-28-2, 8.5” x 11”, softcover, 256 pages, $34.95
Ooligan Press is a general trade publisher rooted in the rich literary tradition of the Pacific N
orthwest, a region
widely recognized for its unique and innovative sensibilities.
To find out m
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w.ooliganpress.pdx.edu.
Ordering Information
Cut here for a bookmark to remember us by.
A Practical G
uide for Teachers is a resource guidefor educators, containing real-life exam
ples of classroom publishing projects,
background on the publishing process, and information on sub-
jects from project planning to eco-friendly publishing options.
This revised second edition teaches educators how
to combine new
technologies and traditional book publishing in order to create engaging lesson plans and encourage student literacy.