From Pencil to Publication: Book Creation at SCS

Ms. Fraser’s Grade 5 and 6 class at Strathclair Community School has been working diligently to develop their writing skills, undertaking the project of creating short stories.  Many students have now published their digital books with text and illustrations using Book Creator.  You can see their work showcased here in our PWSD Library:  https://read.bookcreator.com/library/-Ma-CVa4E0FsnEgnHer1

When I visited this class recently, the class shared the steps they’ve taken to create their work and it was evident that they’ve invested much time and energy in this writing project!  

Ms. Fraser provided a comprehensive planning guide to help students with the writing process.  Students used Ms. Fraser’s template to brainstorm and plan their title, setting, characters, problem, events/action in the story, resolution and conclusion.  Next, they drafted each section of the story including a beginning that introduces the setting and character(s), description of the key events in the story, a conclusion etc.   Students drafted each section of their story with paper and pencil before incorporating technology for the final publications.   

After drafting their stories, students created their books using Book Creator.  Authors added text and images, which could include hand-drawn illustrations or images sourced from the internet.  Students also recorded their voices to add narration for an audiobook version of their story.  

The Grade 5 and 6 class has shared their work with staff and students at their school and I’m excited that many of them gave me the opportunity to share their work online too! Choosing to publish their work led to some good conversations about online privacy and sharing. We explained that students who wished to publish would need to have completed PWSD permission forms for sharing work online. (This is part of our division's registration package that goes home each year for families or guardians to sign and is kept on record at the school office so we can check before sharing student work.). We also had a discussion about how much personal information students wanted to share in their published books: Did they want their full name listed as author or just a first name? Did they want to include their photo in the about the author section or not? Was it a good idea to include their full birthdate when sharing online? I think having these conversations in context is one of the best ways to help our students develop digital citizenship skills and online safety. Students chose to revise their books if they wanted to adjust how much they were sharing before I published them.

Student-Created Book Showcase

 A great way to showcase student work is to create a digital book. We've been using Book Creator in Park West School Division and our students have created some wonderful pieces of work to showcase their writing!  Here are a few examples of digital books students have created this year:

I Wonder...

Mrs. Smart's Grade 4 class created I Wonder books.  They developed 4 I wonder questions about an animal they were curious about, then researched the animal to answer their questions and published a question and answer book with the details they learned.  

A to Zed

Mrs. Gorrell's Grade 2 class was inpsired by a Canadian A-Z book that listed different Canadian items for each letter of the alphabet. They decided to create their own version with an Canadian word for each letter of the alphabet.

Personal Interest

Mrs. Smart's Grade 4s also wrote about one of their personal interests: whether they loved animals or Minecraft, vehicles or sports, students shared about what they love in these books. 

Student Work Showcase

With permission, the following students have shared their work. Check out this Book Creator library for examples of the wonderful work our students have done!  

Inside the Mailbox: a student-created book!

 I'm very excited to share this masterpiece on my blog!  The Grade 7 & 8 class at Decker School just released a book called "Inside the Mailbox".  The book was written and illustrated by this talented group of students over the past several weeks.  It began back in January when we read "The Day the Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers.  

I was inspired to share this book with students and teachers after seeing Ms. McLauchlan's suggestion for using it as a writing prompt.  The read aloud definitely sparked a wonderful writing project in this case.  Students brainstormed different possessions that might have complaints and then narrowed it down to the four "characters" for their book.  Their teacher, Elias Wipf, supported them with the writing process as they drafted and revised letters from the perspective of each possession.  Each student wrote 4 letters from their selected item.  They also drew incredible illustrations to match.  The letters and illustrations were put together using Mixbook.com, which is a tool designed for digital scrapbooking, but allowed for the students to have a digital book that could be professionally printed.  

I visited the student-authors this week and was thrilled to see this incredible book they've created together!  They have given me permission to share their work and I hope that so many other people will enjoy reading their book too. View it here!  

Are you OK? A book by Decker Colony School Grades 7&9

One of the neat things about being a teacher leader and working in many different schools with many different grade levels is that I sometimes get to do a learning activity more than once.   If you read my previous post, you'll see that I used Amy Krouse Rosenthal's The OK Book as inspiration for a writing project with a class in Binscarth a few weeks ago.   Today I visited the Grades 7 & 9 class at Decker Colony School and also shared The OK Book with them.  We used this text as inspiration for illustrating, writing and publishing our own book using Google Slides.  This group had lots of fun with their illustrations and with language, particularly the -er word endings for each sentence.  Check out their finished product below!

It's OK to be OK: A Book by Binscarth Grade 4/5/6

After a semester spent teaching a fabulous grade 6 class at Hamiota Collegiate, I am back in the role of Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for my school division.  In this role, I get to travel around the division supporting teachers and students with using technology in education.   Today, I was lucky to work with the Grade 4/5/6 class at Binscarth School.   I shared with them one of my (many) favourite picture books, The OK Book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.   We used this text as inspiration for creating our own book, which is now published below! 

How did we create this?

First, I read aloud The OK Book and we had a great discussion about the message of this book.   Next, each student chose something they are "OK" at.   They received a template with the OK "stick figure" on it and sketched their illustration.   I photographed their work and uploaded to a shared file for students to access.   Next, students accessed a shared template.   Each student was assigned a slide/page number to use.   Students then inserted their illustration and typed their sentence to go with it.   We brainstormed possible titles and then cast ballots to vote for the best title.   I think their finished product is pretty awesome!

Digital Publishing with Decker Colony Students

In my role as Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for PWSD, I am fortunate to work in lots of great classrooms.   One class that I have worked with recently is Mr. Elias Wipf's Grade 7-9 ELA class at Decker Colony School.   This group of students decided to tackle a special writing project this year.   Their goal was to collaboratively write short stories and publish them digitally.   Their books are now available online and they have printed a copy for their school library.   The quality of their work is absolutely exceptional, so I'd encourage you to check out the books using the links below!

The Fish Said by Grace and Carrie Waldner

The 3 Little Swines by Daniel and Alex Waldner

Unsuspecting by Renae Wipf, Tamar Waldner, Adelheid Waldner and Natalya Waldner 

I have already written quite a bit about publishing digital books on this blog.  If you are interested in digital book creation, you can read more about the process in this post. You can also check out this post to see some more samples and read about why I think students should publish their writing.  A few things to note about the Decker Grades 7-9 books:

• Collaboration:  Students worked with their grade-level peers to write the stories.  They used a shared document (Google Doc) to write collaboratively.
• Planning: In addition to planning their stories, students also used a storyboard to plan the layout of their books.   Developing a storyboard allowed students to plan the illustrations they would need.   Having the storyboards helped students put their text and artwork together in the digital book by following the plan for which pages would contain text and which pages would contain illustrations. 
• Artwork:  The artwork included in these books is excellent!  The students developed their illustrations on paper and a combination of photographing and colour scanning was used to digitize the photos.  
• Revision: The shared documents made ongoing revision easier.   Students and teachers could read, re-read, edit and revise.  The writing in these books was revised and refined a number of times based on peer editing and teacher editing.   

How to Create Digital Books

Publishing digital books is a great way for students to share their work with a wider audience.  In my role as LwICT Teacher Leader, I am fortunate to work with many teachers and students on a variety of LwICT projects.

This term, Mrs. Dreilich worked with students in her Grade 7/8 ICT class to support them in creating digital books.  Mrs. Dreilich shared sample digital books created by my class to provide inspiration, then she guided her students through planning, drafting and revising their own writing.  Many students chose to write children's books and several of them used a question and answer format.

(samples no longer available)

Ms. Cowling's grade 7 class collaboratively published their first digital book, which is a collection of poems.  Each student contributed a "bio poem" for the collection. I especially liked the plan the Grade 7s created for sharing their digital book:

So how can my students publish books?
I've helped students publish books in a few different ways.   Here is one process that might work for you and your students:

Writing
Provide the same structure that you normally would when students are doing a writing project.   Students will need to plan, draft, revise and edit as part of the writing process.  Often, traditional pencil and paper are the best tools for these first steps.  Sometimes, students may draft and edit using a word processor or online document.   Whatever the case, writing mini-lessons and student conferencing will be important to help your writers develop quality written work.  I have found it also helps to identify a target audience and a plan for sharing early in the process.

Illustrating
Often, students create their illustrations on paper.   The illustrations can then be digitized by using colour scanning (most school copiers will do this efficiently) or by photographing each illustration.   Another option is to have students plan the images they need and then take their own photographs or source royalty-free images online (I like Pixabay).

Publishing
The next step is to put together the writing and the illustrations.  One tool I have used is a digital scrapbooking tool called Mixbook. I typically  upload images to Mixbook with/for students and then have students put together their illustrations and text on each page.   Students may wish to type directly on each page in Mixbook or they may have their typing saved so they can copy and paste their text into the book.  

Sharing
Mixbook creates a beautiful digital book and you can "flip through" the pages of your book on their website. Mixbook allows you to share a display link or embed your book in a website or blog.  My class often shares their work through this blog or by sharing the link on social media (such as Twitter).   The book links can also easily be emailed to families, partner classrooms and other stakeholders.

Variations

• Students complete their writing and illustrations on paper and then photograph/scan the finished pages to include in the book.  
• Students type their story and print out the text they want on each page with blank space for illustrations, then draw illustrations.  When the pages are complete, then photograph/scan the finished pages to include in the book.  
• Book Creator is a great app if you want to create digital books on an iPad.  The files export as a PDF or video file.   Book Creator offers the option of adding a recording to each page, so students can easily create an audio book! 

Digital Books: Christmas Mysteries by Ms. Fraser's Class

I have been helping students publish digital books over the last few years.  After students go through  planning, drafting, revising and editing, students digitize their book.  Why?   I am passionate about students doing work that matters and work that has a purpose beyond the classroom.  Whether it is taking action to solve a problem through project-based learning or creating something amazing to share with others, I think that students benefit from learning beyond the classroom.  Extending the writing process to include digital publishing allows students to share their work with a wider audience.  Rather than just the teacher and (maybe) peers seeing student work, digital books can easily be accessed online by families, community members, partner classrooms and others.  It is highly motivating and engaging for students to write for a real audience outside the classroom.   

In my role as LwICT Teacher Leader, I was excited to work with a class to publish their Christmas Mysteries this holiday season!  This week, I visited Ms. Fraser's grade 4/5/6 class.   They had their mysteries written and were diligently working to finish illustrations when I arrived in their classroom.   I was able to support students in digitizing their finished books during my classroom visit.  I was so impressed by the interesting stories and beautiful illustrations!  The grade 4/5/6 class agreed that I could share their work here on my blog, so please take a look at some of their books below and feel free to leave a comment to pass on to them. 

The Case of the Missing Skidoo by Matthew

Where are Blitzen and Donner by Josie

The Mystery of Santa’s Eaten Cookies by Damion

Lost Little Santa Paws Finds a Friend by Kylee

The Mystery of Frosty’s Hat by Sean

2017 Polar Bear Walk: A Retelling

To conclude  our polar bear project, we did some reflecting and summarizing after we held our WWF Polar Bear Walk at Brandon University.  We met on Skype with the OLCS Kindergartens who collaborated with us on this project.  We discussed the project and made a to do list of next steps for the project.  Our list included things like writing thank you cards to those who helped us and sharing the work from our project.  We also made a goal for each class to create something to showcase and reflect on the project.  The kindergartens decided to create a video.  Our grade 1 class chose to write a retelling about the project, since that is a text-type that we have been working on this year.  We worked together to collaboratively author the book, using photographs from the project as our pictures.

Our first book: Is this a ball?

The grade 1s published their first shared writing book today!  We read "Is this a moose?" by Jenny Armstrong and used her book as a model text for our own writing.  First, we began by brainstorming possible topics for our book.  There were a lot of good ideas, but we narrowed it down to 3 topics and voted.  Once we decided to write our book about toys, then we brainstormed some toys we could include in the book.  Since we wanted to have photographs of each toy, we had to make a plan for that too.  We took pictures of any toys we had at school and then some of us took notes home to get our families to help us.  Once we had all of the photographs, we began to write the words for each page of the book.  Each day we would read our writing as a class, then add the writing for the next page.  When we were done writing, we printed off a copy to keep in our classroom and we also made a digital book to share online.  You can flip the pages in our book by clicking here or watch the version below!

Yoga by Acadia

Check out this book written by Acadia:  

A Perfect Ponytail by Acadia

Check out this student-created book made with Book Creator!

Our Special Guest

Local Author/Illustrator Dianne Conrad visited our classroom last week as part of our bookmaking project!  She is writing and illustrating her first children's book called "Dama Grows"  She brought one of the paintings for the book with her and her sketchbook.  We got to ask to ask her TONS of questions and we saw her website http://www.dianneconrad.com/ Then, she gave us some tips while we worked on the artwork for our greenscreening project.  We were so glad to have a special visitor in our classroom and we hope to buy her book when it's ready!

The Pigeon Project: Our Traveling Book Display

To showcase the books we have printed using our Kids Create innovation grant, my students are organizing a traveling book display!  The Kids Create Book Display will feature our Pigeon Project books, as well as other books our class has created.  We contacted our local arts centre and libraries to find out if they'd be willing to host our book display.  We were thrilled to receive a positive response from our community and schools!  Our books are already being enjoyed by others in the Hamiota Elementary School library. 

 

Our next step is advertising our upcoming book display dates - check out our poster below to see where and when you can see our books!

The Pigeon Wants to Drive a Gorilla by Martin Jocson

Martin's Pigeon Project book "The Pigeon Wants to Drive a Gorilla" is now published here! 

| Design your own photo book with Mixbook's easy online editor.

The Pigeon Gets a Drink of Coffee by Haily Johns

Haily has published her Pigeon Project story titled "The Pigeon Gets a Drink of Coffee"!  You can watch it below or flip the pages here.

| Design your own photo book with Mixbook's easy online editor.

The Pigeon Project: Hot off the Press!

Our Pigeon Project launched at the end of last year when our class gained permission from author Mo Willems to use his pigeon character in our own published writing.  We were excited to publish our books online using Mixbook, but students also REALLY wanted to print the books out.  Thanks to a Park West School Division Innovation Grant, we have made that wish come true!  Today, the first shipment of student-created books arrived!

Before printing students' books, we set criteria as a class.  Students with completed books shared their stories with their classmates to get feedback and determine if their work met the criteria.  Student authors had the opportunity to revise their work based on feedback and suggestions from their peers and from me.  We wanted to make sure that we were printing our very best work!

Even though we've read these student-created books before, students couldn't wait to get their hands on the freshly-printed versions today.  Our classroom was bursting with enthusiasm as we read our wonderful collection of Pigeon books!  We will have additional books on the way soon, once more students complete their books!

The Pigeon's Loose Tooth by Kayleigh Knight

Kayleigh has published her Pigeon Project story "The Pigeon's Loose Tooth"!  Watch below or flip through the pages here.

| Design your own photo book with Mixbook's easy online editor.

The Pigeon Needs A Shower by Jaxen Dziver

Here is the latest story from the Pigeon Project !  Jaxen's new story is titled "The Pigeon Needs a Shower".  You can flip through the book here or view below:

| Design your own Photo Book with Mixbook's easy online editor.

The Pigeon Wants a Walrus by Sev Antonio

The Pigeon Project is still alive and well in our classroom.  Students are working to complete stories they started writing last year or they are working on new story ideas for publishing!  Here's Sev's story "The Pigeon Wants a Walrus".  You can flip through the book here or view below:

| Design your own Photo Book with Mixbook's easy online editor.