Three Inverell Public School students became published authors last week.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Chloe Wynter-Kenny, Josee Romer and Matthew Reece impressed judges from the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC) with their tales about the drought.
The CRDC hold the enviro stories competition every year, and had challenged students to write about water in rural communities.
“There are 139 participants and 118 stories entered and Inverell Public had two winners,” CRDC representative Alice Devlin said. She said there were seven winners altogether.
The whole school gave a loud drumroll to the trio as they were surprised with the news during the Wednesday afternoon assembly. Their families snuck in the back to watch the special moment.
The trio of 10-year-olds were each given a small book of their stories, complete with their own illustrations. The school library will stock their own copies for students to borrow.
Chloe and Josee paired up to tell their tale.
“It’s about a raindrop that’s in a cloud and he’s sad because it’s all drought and he wants to just go and help the drought. And then he eventually he goes and he gets the ground and it becomes a flood,” Chloe explained.
Josee said it was “kind of hard but then kind of easy” to work as a team and that her favourite part was “the way it ended happily”. Both loved having the chance to illustrate their story.
Josee said she hoped readers would come away learning that “a bad story can come good”.
Matthew was shy but proud of his work. He said he enjoyed the writing, but was particularly pleased with his drawings.
“It’s really drought and then he gets clouds and crops grow and it starts raining, then he gets all the cows and stuff,” he explained.
Matthew said that he’d learnt that water was important because “you don’t last without it”.
Louis Grebet and Toby Price were also applauded, receiving special awards for their storytelling. Harry Edmonds, Marcus Mather, Zach Wemyss and Todd Fenton were in the top 25 out of 118 students. Every student who participated was given a certificate for their efforts.
Alice, who works for Cotton Info in Moree, said there was a very high calibre of entries this year.
The enviro stories competition was created in 2009 and aims to combine literacy and science education with an understanding of the importance of sustainability.
With the program created to align with the curriculum, teachers at Inverell Public School used the project to help teach students about the drought.