Author, Author!

Turn your classroom into a publishing center — and watch student motivation soar!

• PRINT
• EMAIL

Once upon a time, the writing process for a nine-year-old we'll call Carlos looked like this: create a rough draft, compose, revise, rewrite, then illustrate. The polished final copy of his story might be taped onto the cinder-block walls of the third-grade corridor, but more likely it would disappear into a locked filing cabinet, only to emerge at the key events that punctuate the school year — parents' night, report-card week, and meetings with the language-arts coordinator. Is it any wonder that Carlos felt that writing was, well, pointless?

Motivating children to master the writing process is a teaching challenge as old as lined paper and No. 2 pencils. But today's educators have a wealth of new tools to help them meet it. The reason is simple: Technology makes it easy to publish kids' work, and publishing can be a powerful motivator. Classroom publishing centers are springing up in schools all over the country as teachers strive to give students authentic purpose for writing and to allow their work to be shared with others beyond classroom boundaries.

Carrie Skibba, a third-grade teacher from a small inner-city school in Chicago, describes how she got started: "We had four rickety computers that I integrated into a process-based writing and publishing center. My students generated fiction and nonfiction pieces that I assembled into finished products with covers and illustrations."

First graders in Washington, D. C., with the help of parent volunteers, use bookmaking software (see "Classroom Publishing Resources," page 66) to create original books and illustrations as the culmination of process writing. Teacher Leigh Martin explains, "Each book contains a title page, a dedication — which the kids love to write — a body of work, and an 'about the author' page at the end."

Another popular project is the publication of a classroom newspaper. Fifth-grade teacher Catina Marie Diero, from Petaluma, California, explains how she helps her students create their paper, The Land Crab Courier: "Students compose their articles in our computer lab. I take their finished products and reformat each one into a three-column document containing their original illustrations and titles." An added benefit of the publication is that it serves as a parent newsletter. "The kids love reading the Courier before taking it home to mom and dad," says Diero. "Part of their homework is to read it to a parent who then signs it to let me know they have received the information it contains."

Teachers describe the advantages of classroom publishing centers in glowing terms, asserting that the centers have a powerful impact on their students' writing ability. Lauren Katzman, a teacher from New Jersey, remarks, "Publishing a student newspaper made writing more real because students were writing about their school and the things that were important to them. The publishing process made their writing more worthy — each piece became a public piece. Students would come to class early in the morning to write, stay after school to write — it was what they wanted to do!"

As Katzman, whose students have learning disabilities, found out, the benefits for struggling readers and writers can be particularly impressive. Danya Muller, a teacher of learning disabled fourth- and fifth-graders in Newton, Massachusetts, agrees. "Technology provides a totally new avenue for learning how to write," she says. "A lot of kids who may not see their strengths in many areas excel at using computers. Kids who have trouble fitting in feel really cool when they can publish their work online. They love it, and their writing really takes off." A further advantage, she has discovered, is that the computer is a multimodal learning tool: "It encompasses all aspects of how their brains work — kinesthetic, visual, and so on."

These days when Carlos writes, it is with an altogether new purpose. He first asks himself: How do I want to publish this work? If it's an interview with the school soccer coach, he may publish it in the school newspaper. A science-fiction piece about a trip to Mars might be made into a book by using software that has templates for formatting both text and graphics, then displayed in the school library. He might post an original poem on his class Web site, where not only his grandparents in Mexico but also his class keypals across the country will see it.

Writing for an audience, Carlos feels like a real writer. And as you place your own creative spin on the ideas presented below, your students will begin to feel — and write — like real writers, too.

 

The Classroom Press: Getting Started

• Start small and grow. Even if your classroom has only a single computer, you can still set up a publishing center. By installing a simple bookmaking program such as EasyBook Deluxe, children can transform their stories and illustrations into polished, printed works to be shared throughout the school. Once students get hooked on creating original books, they'll have a repertoire from which to draw in the future when they are able to publish on the Web.

After establishing one station, create a vision for what your ultimate publishing center would look like. Do your students have keypals in another state or country? If so, your next step might be to dedicate one computer to sending, receiving, and printing these e-mail exchanges.

Find ways to work on a shoestring budget. You may not really need a state-of-the-art Pentium-chip processor — a healthy five-year-old PC may fulfill your immediate needs. Enlist your technology coordinator to help you raise funds to purchase additional hardware and software over time.

• Work with many types of writing. Children need to be comfortable with all forms of writing. Immerse students in a wide range of text genres — stories, interviews, plays, travel brochures, rules for games, recipes, menus. Then brainstorm ideas for making a current unit of study more vivid through students' original publications. How about creating a chart featuring different types of fish for an oceanography theme, for example? Or writing a play to dramatize the life of Harriet Tubman?

• Set aside time for peer editing. Even if you already use peer-editing sessions, adapt your routine to reflect the wide range of projects generated by your publishing center. The children working together on multimedia reports can critique one anothers' work in one group while the poetry anthology group meets in a different corner of the room.

• Explore publishing options on the Web. Online publishing opportunities abound. Start by exploring the sites listed at right and target one or two to get started.

• Create a class Web site as a venue for publishing student work. This is not as difficult as it may sound. New software and free online services, such as those listed below, now make it possible even for novices to build a site. No HTML programming skills required!

• Publicize! Get the word out about your publishing efforts to parents, colleagues, and friends in the community and beyond. Create an electronic mailing list to keep your "fan club" informed and to encourage feedback.

 

Bookmaking Software

Templates and clip art for a wide range of publishing projects:

• EasyBook Deluxe by Sunburst, http://www.sunburst.com
• Ultimate Writing & Creativity Center by The Learning Company, http://www.learningcompanyschool.com
• SuperPrint Deluxe by Scholastic,
• Publisher Microsoft, http://www.microsoft.com/office/publisher

Online Publishing Venues for Kids

• Candlelight Stories: http://www.candlelightstories.com
• Writing with Writers: http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/index.htm
• Young Writer: http://www.mystworld.com/youngwriter
• Young Author's Magazine Program: http://www.yam.regulus.com

Tools for Building a Class Web Site

• i-Tools HomePage: Part of Apple's new Internet services, free to Macintosh OS 9 users. Templates, editing tools, hosting (http://www.apple.com).
• SiteCentral: Web authoring software by Knowledge Adventure, designed to support HyperStudio projects (http://www.knowledgeadventure.com).
• Scholastic.com: In September 2000, check our site for a new Web site creation tool for teachers! ().

Help Students Settle Into Your Classroom
Ideas and getting-to-know-you activities for making students feel welcome and comfortable in their new learning environment.

Teacher Advisors' Best Tips: Back-to-School
Five veteran teachers share their secrets to a smooth start to the year with tips for setting up your classroom, getting students acquainted, and motivating learners for the year ahead.

LESSON PLAN

Literature Analysis Students will discuss literature with their peers, identifying the character, plot, and setting of the book and analyzing them.