Story originally printed in the Holmen Courier or online at www.holmencourier.com
Published - Friday, May 26, 2006
Sand Lake hard of hearing students recognized
Four Holmen second-graders won a state award, but are afraid they may become too famous.
"I don't want to be famous because it is too much work," Kassie Freismuth said. Rebekah Olson agreed. She said her uncle wants her autograph.
 These four Sand Lake Elementary deaf and hard-of-hearing students received a judge’s choice award for second-grade level of the Reading Rainbow’s Young Writers and Illustrators contest for their book, “The Hard of Hearing Book,” which explains what it is like to be hard of hearing. Pictured above are, from left: front: Jackson Kalas, Sean Deml; back, Kassie Freismuth and Rebekah Olson. Photo by Tony Nelson |
So what award has brought these Sand Lake Elementary students into the limelight?
The four students wrote a book called "The Hard of Hearing Book." The students are deaf or hard of hearing and wanted to help others understand that they were the same as everyone else.
"We are hard of hearing, so we thought it would be cool to let others know about how we hear," Olson said.
Freismsuth and Olson along with Sean Deml and Jackson Kalas worked together to write and illustrate the book. Their hard work paid off because it received a Judges' Choice award in the second grade category of the Wisconsin Public Television's Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators contest.
The students' book was chosen from more than 400 entries throughout Wisconsin. The students will travel to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin on June 3 to receive recognition and awards. Their book will also be posted on the Reading Rainbow Web site at gpn.unl.edu/rainbow.
Reading Rainbow is a long running public TV program hosted by LeVar Burton and encourages kids to read.
The 10-page book explains about being deaf, what hearing aids do, sign language, and reading lips. But most importantly, it tells how the students are just like everyone else. They can do what everyone else does and they dreams of what they want to be when they grow up.
This was a great exercise with practical applications, Tracie Happel said. Happel, the Sand Lake Deaf and Hard of Hearing program teacher, said the children had to be concise about their words - something they learn in second grade - because they were limited on how many pages they could have.
They also learned computer skills through illustrating the book with photographs and computer drawings they made and combining both pictures and drawings into illustrations.
Besides learning about writing concisely and computer skills, they also learned to work together and found out that it doesn't matter if you win or lose, just that you try your hardest.
"It's nice to try hard," Freismuth said.
Contact Tony Nelson at 786-6813 or tony.nelson@lee.net.
All stories copyright 2006 Holmen Courier and other attributed sources.