BY JASMINE WILLIAMS
jasmine@dresdenenterprise.com
DRESDEN (December 3) – Dresden Elementary School teacher Sherry Hatchel teaches the second grade and for more than 15 years she has included a special project for each of her classes. Each year, students will work on making a book about a given topic. This year the book that her second graders made is titled, “Wonderful Weakley County,” which was dedicated to the Director of Weakley County Schools, Randy Frazier.
Each child contributed to the book by noting their favorite things or parts about Weakley County. They drew a picture about what their favorite thing was; they also answered questions that included what their favorite business, building, restaurant and place to play or ride to in Weakley County was. They were also asked to bring a picture of themselves taken in Weakley County.
Each book is dedicated to someone in the community.
After the book was completed and printed, each child received a copy and presented it to Frazier, who was very happy it was dedicated to him. He thanked the whole class and also thanked all 20 students individually.
The book was dedicated to Frazier because Hatchel knew that this year had been very hard on so many who had to made tough decisions about schools this year.
Inside the dedication to Frazier reads, “Dedicated to Randy Frazier. Mrs. Sherry Hatchel’s second grade class would like to dedicate this book to Mr. Randy Frazier, Director of Weakley County Schools. Thank you for your hard work and hard decisions during the time of COVID-19. We appreciate you!”
This project is conducted as part of the English and Language Arts classes to help promote reading and writing. Hatchel noted that each year, the students get so excited to see the physical book they were able to create together and they feel they have made a big accomplishment at such a young age.
Other themes of books her class has created include: the city of Dresden, Santa’s Helpers, the Tennessee Iris Festival, vacations or where they want to travel to, ABC’s of Christmas, a Christmas recipe book, and many more.
Anyone can purchase this book by going to the publisher’s website, studentreasures.com, which is based in Camden. On that website they can search for “Wonderful Weakley County” and purchase the book through the website.
Hatchel also encourages all teachers to try this in the future as the class is able to learn and do so much and be able to take home a book.