Young authors creating books

By GINA KINSLOW
Glasgow Daily Times

GLASGOW May 08, 2008 05:51 pm

— Preschool students at Highland Elementary are learning how to write children’s books, even though they can’t read.
The project that enables 3- and 4-year-olds to become young authors is called Writers’ Workshop and it’s something the students have been involved with since January.
“We implemented Writers’ Workshop in response to the needs of fourth grade, specifically focusing on writing for publication,” said Vicki Smith, preschool coordinator.
Writing for publication is something fourth-graders must do when submitting writing samples for their portfolios. To ensure students know how to write for publication by the time they reach the fourth grade, the school decided to implement Writers’ Workshop in an effort to align its writing curriculum.
“Here at Highland, we’re just really stressing writing and we want that to start as young as possible,” said Tajuana Lisenby, who teaches fourth-grade science. “As they learn to write very simple sentences, if they can do that now, then when they get to the fourth grade they are going to be able to do so much more.”
To kick off the project, the school invited children’s author Paul Brett Johnson to conduct activities with the students on how to get inspiration for writing a book.
“All preschool children write long before they ever learn to read. They are scribbling. They are drawing pictures. They are making letter-like shapes. They are sounding out words,” Smith said. “It’s just a natural process, capitalizing on the strengths that children have and helping them bridge the gap to their needs in kindergarten in reading and writing.”
On Tuesday, she sat down with preschoolers in Jennifer Fudge’s preschool class and reviewed with them the two basic types of books they are producing – list books and picture books. However, some students have written how-to books, Smith said.
A list book is one about ABCs or numbers, while a picture book tells a story using illustrations. Smith also reviewed the various components of a book, such as front and back covers, title pages, two-page spreads and speech bubbles.
Next, she called on 3-year-old Lane Poland to talk about his picture book about monsters and ghosts.
Once Poland shared his book with his classmates, Smith turned the students loose to work on their own books.
The students make improvements here and there as they work.
“What we hear, as a book progresses and as you’re conferencing with those children, we hear the same storylines. They are true to that storyline and then as the storyline progresses, they edit their story by embellishing it,” Smith said.
Eventually, the students’ books will be transferred to hardback books and cataloged as a part of their classroom libraries.
Michelle Lynch, a kindergarten teacher at Highland, has already started incorporating Writers’ Workshop in her class. She began by asking her students to write in journals.
“We started at the beginning of the year just learning about the parts of a journal, the parts of a notebook, what tools we use and then we started writing,” she said. “They started out writing things that are familiar to them. They write about themselves, about their families and now they are taking stories and books that we read and (are) writing about them.”
Her students are also making books similar to the ones the preschool students are making and like the preschoolers’ books, the kindergartners’ books will be transferred to hardback books that will become a part of their classroom library.

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