Ms. Jennings' Children's book

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B4-4lU_P0OgjWlZ5cjFKMkY2OWc

These are a work in progress.  I am afraid that learning to operate our new scanner/copier may be beyond me.  Hoping to get this right very soon!

I have one or two more coming in, slowly but surely we're getting it done.  I think that once we realized what our work looked like scanned, our work ethic and techniques changed.  Those who finished quickly guided others in peer editing.  This helped immensely, as we didn't have to take another couple of days to work on editing. 

Pre-writing:
We began with a list of values, personal values.  I asked everyone to fins the ten that were the most important to them.  Then we narrowed it down to five, then three, then two and finally one value that really meant the most to them personally. 

Then we did a quickwrite explaining what that value meant to them and how they would explain explain it to someone else.  Next, we chose an animal or character we could write about. 

On the next step, we worked in our journals by coming up with a beginning, middle and an end.

Final step in pre-writing was taking a regular sheet of paper and folding it into fourths, this gave us eight pages.  The brainstormed what their character would do to SHOW a young reader what their value meant. 

Drafting and editing:
Students were allowed five days to work their way through the book.  I began by saying that we had to have 20 pages, but soon reduced the goal to cover the story.  I allowed them lots of creativity and we printed off many coloring sheets to help with the art work. 

Wins:  Students were challenged to create based on their own understanding of a word, I did not help them in the choosing or in the defining.

Challenges:  Many of us were more worried about the art work and less worried about the words.  I wanted this whole project to be based on maximizing word choices, guess I will plan for longer to help in the art process and be more specific. 

Many of us were more worried about the art work and less worried about the words. 

Overall, it was great fun to get away from the multiple essays we've been working on.