Author's Chair

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone is enjoying spending time with their families and taking time to give thanks for our many blessings in life.

This past week, our class has been busy becoming authors. We have been writing stories about what we like to do. The students started with a word web to organize their thoughts and then put their ideas into sentences. When the students were finished writing the sentences, they checked for capitals and punctuation, and then made sure all the word wall words were spelled correctly. I then asked them to pick two words for me to help them spell that were not on the word wall. When students were finished editing and conferencing with me, they turned in their papers to be published. We have a 5th grade student that is the publisher. Kelsey types up the story and we bind it together. The book is then returned to the student to illustrate it. When this entire process is completed, the student get to do author's chair to share their published story. There are a few more stories that are being illustrated and many more that are being published. This does take time. I do ask the students to be patient because an author and publisher do not publish a story overnight. It is a process that takes time.

In this video, Kenzie shares her story--What I Like--during author's chair. Please continue to check the blog because other students are in the publishing process. I do not require students to publish. This is a choice in my room. Everyone writes during writing time, but not every child will get through this process. Every student works at writing at where they are at developmentally. I will conference with each student and encourage them to work towards a published story. If you do not see your students story on the blog please encourage them to publish.