I have to get this off my chest. I am tired of always publishing writing on a plain piece of paper. Seriously, I am bored to death of it.
So, in an attempt to get away from publishing paragraphs on a nice, lined piece of paper, I gave my students some index cards instead.
The students wrote narratives with the key element of conflict as a prominent feature. (we were wrapping up our
Conflict in 5 Days unit. You can read more about it
here.) After they finished their draft and revisions, I gave them index cards for their final draft. Each student received five cards. First, they wrote the entire story on the cards (since this was basically a paragraph sized story to begin with, I knew that they wouldn't need too many cards.) Most kids used 2 or 3 cards to write the entirety of their story.
Next, I asked the students to turn the remaining cards over and draw a picture. The first picture needed to be a cover page, with the title of their conflict story as well as their name. Then, the rest of the cards were used to draw pictures matching the action taking place in the story.
Once all of that was finalized, I gave the students a cut sheet of construction paper (6" x 12") and asked the kids to tape the index cards on so they formed a sort of step book. I showed the kids individually how to put the first index card on (as they walked up to me when they finished the coloring....it was rather staggered) and they were able to figure out how to lay the rest out with the tape to form the steps.
Then, it formed this nice little step book that is interesting on the eyes and DIFFERENT than that plain, old, boring piece of paper.
What is one way that you have discovered to publish student writing that is unique and fun?
Nice idea! They look great and don't take up too much room on a bulletin board.
ReplyDeleteThat was my favorite part too!
DeleteSuch a doable idea that looks super cute and fun to make!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you! My kids really had a great time putting it all together!
DeleteWhen I was little, my language arts teacher used a file folder to have us write our own short story. We folded it in half, on the long side, and used it as our book base. You could write your story on the top or the bottom and , depending on where your writing was, you had to illustrate your story. The front of the folded file folder was your cover which included: title and author/illustrators name and the back was the ending of your story with your theme sentence. I am in my 50's and I still remember doing this project. It was awesome and engage all levels of learning.
ReplyDeleteStephanie, I am so glad that you are still blogging, I love reading ALL of your blog posts, they always have tons of great ideas. One thing that one of my grade 6 teachers did with us is that she went to a wallpaper shop and got those big sample books of wallpaper. Then, we went through the writing process. As we finished up the draft, we got to choose the cover we wanted for our wallpaper and created a book from it complete with a dedication page and all.
Delete