We have a PTO publishing committee. This year we have something like 10 volunteers, and that's just for the binding.
Each class has parent volunteers to help the younger students by typing their stories, which are written during class. The older students often do their own typing. Most teachers only go for one published book per student; some do more. We use Word book templates for the most part, but there are variations from those templates. One kindergarten teacher used Storybook Weaver for all of her class stories.
The publising committee is very popular! Many of the volunteers also help out with the book fair, and help in the library, so there's a motif there. However, there are times when a specific class has difficulty getting classroom volunteers.
At the end of the year we have an author's celebration. The publishing committee decorates an area, and collects and displays all the published books for a week. There's a theme and a slogan, and classes sign up to visit the display for about a half hour. Parents can come in to visit before and after school.
How do you bind them inhouse? Do you use a cerlox binder or something else? I'm definitely intrigued. We do not do anything like this at our school, but would be very interested.
We are a K-5 Elementary school in SC. Each year we have a PTO committee that handles student book publishing. It has become the "nightmare committee" that no one wants to volunteer for. I agreed to help this year and at our first meeting yesterday was hit with the challenge of finding a software solution.
This year we are limiting each student to a max of 2 published books. We type, produce and bind the books inhouse. In the past all the books have been typed with no limit to quantity per child (lots of poor quality as some kids went for quantity rather than quality). This year we are having K-3 handwrite and illustrate their books and only type 4th and 5th. The goal for next year is to have our Computer teachers and Art teachers get involved with 4th and 5th so that the students can type the books and then illustrate them.
My question is how do other schools handle this? Do any of you use a software package to make it easier to produce the copies? I know that I can use Word's booklet template so that it will be printed properly.
