Sunday, April 28, 2019

Authentic Writing You Can Do ... with your Students!

I've shared several times that as a Technology Integration Specialist, I do not have my own classroom of students. Nor do I have any kind of regular teaching schedule. This allows me to work any teacher and any group of students! My goal is that I anything/everything I do supports classroom instruction and I love when teachers come to me and ask me to work with students. Sometimes, what we set out to do morphs into something else ... and it's always a good thing!

At the beginning of March, Mrs. Laura Counts approached me to help a group of her students. These 5 students had read several books by Sandra Markle (@Sandra_Markle) and had decided they wanted to write their own book, in her style. Laura asked if I would help. Wow! They wanted to do the research, the writing, AND the designing of the book! 

The overall task was this: the students were inspired after reading a non-fiction book to write their own book. As a group, they decided to research bird feet and each selected a bird. They would use their research to write in the style of Sandra Markle. Meanwhile, I would work with them to take their writings and make it into a book.

We set to work. I met with the students a couple times a week to work on the actual book design and on the other days, they would do their research. I had such fun talking through the design process ... we had a LOT of decisions to make! Which tool do we use? Book Creator? Google Slides? Something else? We settled on Slides. Then we poured over every detail ... the dimensions of the book (we literally pulled out a ruler to measure!); making the wooden sign; which font(s) to use - this was a BIG conversation ... do we all use the same? does each author use a different one?; whose page goes first? last? order?; gathering the credits for the images we used; and many more! I have to hand it to these 5 kiddos. They did an AMAZING job! They put forth their very best. It really shows!

A very interesting conversation we had very early on was whether or not Ms. Markle would
"mad" that they were writing this. One of the boys was worried she would be angry. I asked him why, and basically he was worried she would think we were copying her. I assured him we weren't going to profit off of this and we would be giving her the credit. Mrs. Counts added that she thought Ms. Markle would be thrilled we were doing this. I offered to reach out to her. I did so, via Twitter - our world really isn't as big as one would think! - and she responded very quickly! It was awesome to be able to show them that the author was proud of them.

We used several digital tools to help us create our book. One of our favorite is a website "Build Your Wild Self" from the Bronx Zoo (unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available anymore). Then we also used a couple of "digital scissors" -- https://online.photoscissors.com/ (to be able to take the "wild self" and attach their specific bird legs) and https://www.remove.bg/ (for our author pages - not shown in the preview below because of the age of the students). Show the students the power of a Google Slide was incredible! I don't know who enjoyed it more, them or me! 

I am happy to share the final version of their book! The attention to detail and the excitement these students showed through this whole project is heartwarming. I'm not sharing their author pages due to their age, but several of them have commented on wanting to be authors! ....... I believe they already are!




Have a question or comment? Feel free to comment below, reach out to me on Twitter @kiefersj, or email me at sarah@techyoucando.com.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing your story! It's neat to read about this project from conception to final draft!

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    1. You are welcome! I do hope I can serve as inspiration to others!

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  2. Ross Ram Proud! Can't wait to see the book signing!

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