By Jessica Easthope
It’s the first look they’ve been waiting for, a glimpse into outer space, as told by them.
These fourth graders at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy in Sunset Park are finally seeing “Our Galaxy System,” a book they wrote, illustrated, and published.
“I was thinking, I wonder how it will be like when people read the book that my class wrote, and how proud my parents will be of me and how proud my teacher is of me and of my class of writing the book,” said Sabrina Seweryn, a 4th grader at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy.
“You just feel like you accomplished something,” said Israel Gomez, a 4th grader at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Academy.
It took three months for teacher, Nichola Seteratne, to assign topics, for the students to conduct research, and to actually start putting pen, not pencil, to paper, something Israel Gomez was nervous about.
“You need to make no mistakes to write the things on the paper with a pen,” Gomez said.
Israel wrote about the first man on the moon. The book covers more than a dozen other topics, from the power of the sun to extraterrestrial life.
“It’s not just like ELA or math, like theoretical work or practical work they need to know, but they need to know about the outside world too,” Ms. Seteratne said.
Once the final draft was in, Ms. Seteratne sent it to Student Treasures Publishing. Now, each student has their own copy to treasure for life.
“They will always remember, even if they go to middle school or the upper grades, there will be something they will always remember about their fourth grade,” Ms. Seteratne said.
Their passion for outer space is still burning bright.
“It was fun to research,” Seweryn said. “There are many different things in the galaxy, and there are new things to come there, like the Andromeda galaxy system, and there’s all different planets to learn about.”
“There are different kinds of planets to see. And there are nebulas, which is like a cloud in space, but it’s like a gas,” Gomez said. “Because they say space is infinite, so we have a lot to learn about space, but we still have a lot because we only explored a little bit of it.”
Now that the book is finally in the hands of her 4th graders, Ms. Seteratne is looking to put it in the hands of anyone else who’s interested by publishing it on Amazon.
If you want to send your children to Catholic school, just visit catholicschoolsbq.org or call 718-965-7380 for more information.