My students need a scanner and color printer to support our collaborative writing project. Our goal as a group is to write books that we would love to read.
My students LOVE books. We have a very special multi-age classroom of 12 students who love to listen to, read and tell stories. We have a large classroom library with picture books, fiction, nonfiction, and chapter books, that is a favorite place for students to gather during free choice time.
Most of my students are challenged by Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Many have limitations with expressive language but have strong receptive language skills. They are an amazing group, many of whom have been with me for 3 years, working on understanding situations, recognizing humor, and empathizing with characters as a part receptive language work, using the process of story- listening and story-telling. Expressing themselves, however, in response to those stories can be quite difficult. We have tried several techniques to help the students connect with and develop their ability to respond to literature. We are currently working on organization techniques, including identifying nouns, verbs and adjectives and using those adjectives to describe easily identifiable nouns. We are taking that organizational tool and using it to help students use adjectives to describe friends, family, and favorite characters. Once developed, the next step is to guide the group through the writing process.
My Project
We will be conducting writing sessions in an open "brainstorming" format where a document camera and projector will be utilized to present the artist illustrations. Students will be asked to contribute character ideas, dialog and story elements with the teacher acting as facilitator and instructional assistants acting as scribes. This is a student-centered approach wherein students direct the nature of the story and create something they would enjoy reading and can read at their own comprehension level.
The scanner can be used to convert hand drawn illustrations to computer images that we can use and revisit for future stories.
The printer will allow us to have a dedicated tool that will be used to print student work, drafts and final copies of our writing specimens, individually and as a group, to create a finished product that the student will be proud to share. Ultimately, we would love to publish our own student-written books and distribute them amongst friends, family, and peer classrooms.
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