Creating books using the Blank Slate™ Board Books publishing kit gives students the opportunity to:
• become authors, photographers, and illustrators. Students have the opportunity to communicate with others by using images that are important to them and text from their own experience. As a teacher, you know that young children are motivated to read and reread their books and the books of their peers. This repeated reading of their self-published books helps students see themselves as readers and writers.
• develop their understanding of writing and because they develop together, reading. For example, writing develops and reinforces students’ understanding of concepts of print, such as concepts related to conventions, purpose, and functions of print. Writing helps students attend to the structure of stories (story grammar, author, illustrator, audience) and the sound-symbol relationships of words. It gives students an opportunity to think aloud about the process of writing.
• make a plan to develop their book from the writing of the story through the cover design, title page, page layout, and placement of text and illustrations.
• develop computer skills and use word processing software, digital cameras, scanners, and printers.
• experience the satisfaction of being a part of the entire writing and publishing process.
• have the immediate satisfaction of seeing the end product of all of their work in an attractive, durable, and familiar form, a board book.
How it Works
You or your students come up with an idea. Use the computer or work by hand. When using the computer, work with the templates provided in the kit, type in text, import digital photos, clip art, or scanned images into the template. Print the story on the labels provided. Place them in the book. Or, write directly on the labels and place them in the book. It’s that simple! Keep the books in the class library or send them home to be read over and over again!
Here are some examples of how the books can be used to fit into the curriculum:
• sequence/record a process
• summarize a concept or an experience
• review concepts
• respond to or extend an experience or text
• tell a story using pictures and text
• retell a story using knowledge of story grammar
• show their understanding
• explore how to organize information
• write journal entries
• record words that belong in certain word families, or adjectives that describe a noun, words that contain short vowel sounds, etc
• use writing conventions
• demonstrate their thinking as they move through the process of writing
• track changes, show growth/progress
• explain abstract concepts
