Putnam City - Public Schools Foundation

In a recent visit to Hilldale Elementary School by author Kay Jackson, students learned about deserts, oceans, submarines and more.  Kay Jackson, an author living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has written more than 17 nonfiction books on topics ranging from biomes (regional or global biotic communities) to plate tectonics (explains global distribution of geological phenomena) to submarines.  She was a teacher for 20 years in five different states and three different countries on three different continents.  She has lived in deserts, grasslands, the rain forest and near the ocean.  Nonfiction books lead her to those places, and she uses her experiences to write nonfiction books.  Kay and her husband have even used nonfiction books to help them build a submarine, which they have named "Bob."

Hilldale LMS Jeanne Fields invited Foundation representatives and donors to come to the school for a presentation by several students about what they had learned from Ms. Jackson's recent visit.  Ms. Dawson's 3rd-grade class explained their "treasure hunt" to the visitors; facts they discovered by using the index, table of contents, and text from Kay Jackson's books.  The 5th-grade students were impressed by a video presentation they watched which showed some of the adventures Ms. Jackson experienced that gave her much of the material she used when writing.  They heard the sound a prairie dog makes when communicating and learned that prairie dogs communicate with each other differently than people.  They saw some of the things Jackson saw in her underwater adventures and learned that deep down in the ocean it's very dark, and if any of the creatures that live in those dark places are made to come out of their natural environment they will die. 

The 5th-grade students presented Putnam City Foundation with a banner signed by most of the students at the school.  They thanked the Foundation for their support for author visits, explaining that being able to host authors at their school not only encourages them to read more, it might even help them in their decision for what they want to do in life.