After spending months learning about the writing process and practicing their craft, we wanted to celebrate these 1st and 2nd graders’ accomplishments in a special way. Working in collaboration with our district literacy curriculum coaches, technology integration specialist and grants writer, we planned a Book Fair event at our local library. Keep reading to learn more about this fantastic event, and how you can replicate this in your own school or district!
Writing
Students and teachers in grades K-5 at Miles Elementary and Poly Drive Elementary Schools have worked with our district literacy coaches this year to learn the foundations of writing. In 1st and 2nd grade, students have learned to use WriteReader to publish some of their completed stories. Students love that they can add image bank photos and upload their own images to illustrate their WriteReader books.
For this project, students wrote book reviews of favorite books from the library. After writing and illustrating on paper, they used WriteReader to publish their books. The technology integration specialist for our district was able to model using this tool for teachers and students. Students used the camera in WriteReader to take photos of their illustrations to add to their digital books, then used the speech to text tool to put their text into the books. This was a helpful tool, as students had already spent much time writing and editing their stories. The speech to text tool allowed them to efficiently publish their final drafts.
Printing
Because our goal was to display the finished books at the local public library, we wanted the books to be sturdy enough to be handled by many children. We secured some funding from the First Interstate Bank Foundation by collaborating with our district’s grants writer. With these funds, we were able to work with a local printer to print each student’s book on sturdy cardstock. The result was fantastic and the students were thrilled to see their books in print!
It was very simple to download the completed books by selecting “Print and Download” from your “Books” screen. You can bulk download all of the books you plan to print, saving them as PDFs.
Reading Rooms
Although our books were printed, we also wanted to share digital versions of the WriteReader books, as well. This was easy to do by creating Reading Rooms in WriteReader for each class. The school librarian created a QR code poster for each Reading Room, so that visitors, family and friends could scan and read the digital versions of each book.
Our next blog post will highlight our field trip to the library, which was the highlight of our year!
For information and inspiration to plan your own Book Fair Event, please look here.
