My students need publishing supplies, such as construction paper, yarn, and needles, and mentor texts to get them motivated to write and publish their own book.
One of the biggest obstacles as a fifth grade teacher is getting students motivated to write their own story. They are stuck in a rut and can't get their ideas flowing. I want them to find the joy in writing and publishing their own story. Little do they know, but they will all soon be authors!
I teach in a Title 1 school where we work hard to make our students fabulous readers and writers.
I have discovered that my students all write in the same way as one another. For the first few months of school we have been working on finding their unique writing styles. They are all creative in their own way, but they have to step out of the box and try something new. They currently are having a difficult time expanding one paragraph stories into a more in depth story. By publishing their own book they will be more motivated to expand their thoughts and take more time with their writing.
My Project
As a first year teacher, teaching writing seems like a daunting task, so I thought back to what I learned in my college courses. In one course we got to write and publish our own book. What better way than to bring this into my own classroom to get my students motivated to write. They get to see professionally published books each day, but they only write in their writing notebook. I want to bridge the gap between writing to prompts and getting to publish their own writing.
The books, such as Gingerbread Friends or Dragons Love Tacos, will help them get ideas about what to write and different ways to write. They will learn about plot development, sentence variety, and word choice in more depth. By using the supplies, such as construction paper, yarn, and needles, they will learn the process of publishing books, taking ownership in what they write, and ensuring that they pay close attention to editing what they write.
I am so excited to put this writing project into action.
Students will have the opportunity to listen to a variety of mentor texts to help get the creative juices flowing as well as model proper writing techniques. My students vary from loving to write to avoiding it, but this project will allow writers of all stages to enjoy the process of writing. At the end of the project they will have their own published book to take home and read to mom and dad!
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