Student Made Class Books

It's always the same, students love to make collaborative books and read them again and again. Over time they begin to recognize each others drawing  and writing styles. Sometimes during writing workshop or morning centres kinders will re-read an earlier piece and add onto either their drawing or writing. 

I am always on the lookout for great topics for classroom books. Thank you Pinterest!!! It is a rich resource for me, and I have begun to collect ideas and store them digitally.

As teachers we are always on the lookout for activities that inspire, motivate and provide opportunity for reading/writing fluency. I believe that class made books are an excellent vehicle for this process as part of a balanced writing program.

A class book begins with a cloze sentence which the writer is required to add his/her own ideas. A cloze sentence is an open ended phrase that the children complete and then draw a picture to match their sentence. It has a different set of writing expectations than writing workshop, although they look very similiar and have similar expectations; use writing criteria such as ground, sky, sun and character(s); choose your own writing partner, etc. The big difference though is that they are not choosing their own topic, instead I have chosen the topic and they add their own knowledge to the story. Sometimes we write about a topic or retell key elements of a story that the kinders have connected with.

This style of writing encourages the writers to expand their writing topics as typically kinders enjoy writing on the same topic many times. It also encourages collaboration as they share ideas and frequently help each other, discuss possible writing ideas and sometimes plan together. At the same time it provides important support for our younger writers as they need to know fewer high frequency words such as like and the to complete a sentence but have the words modelled in their own sentence.

I like to choose a topic that the children have a strong schema about such as a unit of study, topic of interest or linked to their personal lives. For example, last week they wrote about 100 day and a couple of weeks before that they wrote about things they love and don't love. This week they will be asked to write about what kind of play they enjoy with a friend.