"Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone."
Amy Tan
My 2nd grade students have been working on personal narratives for the past two and a half weeks and in an effort to increase their motivation towards writing and their academic achievement in writing, I stated at the beginning of the project that their stories would be shared with their families, friends and classmates during an author's celebration. We counted down the days, kept our eyes on the deadline, shared different stages of writing with one another and wrote, wrote wrote.
I put together their illustrations and final writing pieces into individual books and found a site that would publish their stories into a 'real' hard cover book for free! The class is given a complimentary copy and parents could purchase additional copies at a reasonable price.
Because our classroom has 1:1 iPods, the students recorded themselves reading their stories (they even added a statement like, "When you hear the beep, turn the page...."). These voice memos were uploaded to the class website and a QR code was made for each voice memo. These QR codes are on the front cover of each book. Sooooo cool!
This Thursday, my master teacher (who is WONDERFUL) and I are hosting an author's celebration so the students can share their work with their parents, other teachers, and classmates. School and district administrators will also attend and the students are nervous, but excited!
So proud of these writers!
I love this and I love your action research and I want to do this too and I want to come to your classroom for the celebration to see their work! :) This is amazing, and whatever the frustrations you're having I think this is such a cool project. Even if some of the kids aren't having the reaction you were hoping for now with the writing, this will be one of the things they remember as a positive. It's so meaningful, creative, and engaging, I can't wait to see the next thing you do for it.
ReplyDeleteI love the whole idea and the QR code is genius! Thanks for sharing and explaining how to do the QR thing!!
ReplyDeleteI love what you've done with your students Bernice and I was so happy to get to hear more about it yesterday at the AR conference. Those books are amazing and something that the children and their parents will treasure forever! You inspired me to work harder!
ReplyDeleteI am absolutely amazed at what you have done. This sounds like something any teacher can do in any classroom. I am curious what was the site you used for getting a free publishing of the stories?
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