From basic sentences to full stories, students at Northwest Elementary School have been doing a lot of writing lately and proudly showcasing their work.
Kindergartners in Danielle Carrero’s class are learning sight words and writing sentences that reflect their interests. Children wrote “I like” statements about places they like to go or activities they like to do. The finished pieces, which included illustrations, were then hung in the hallway underneath their “Wild About Reading” tree.
Meredith Cohen’s first graders worked on personal narrative pieces, writing about small but memorable moments in their lives. The class had a digital writing celebration because in addition to their published works, students also recorded themselves reading their stories using Flipgrid.
A bulletin board in the hallway featured the QR codes for every video, so people walking by could take out their phones, hold up the camera and watch. Ms. Cohen said that with a mix of in-person and remote learners this year, the technology component of this project helped all of her young writers connect with each other.
Second graders in Jenny Smith and Kerrin Faulkner’s class completed their personal narrative stories, then moved on to realistic fiction. The teachers noted that the switch from non-fiction to fiction writing, where students have to come up with their own characters, plot and setting, can be challenging. That’s why they introduced students to Pixton, an online comic and storybook creator. Children were able to pick the background, characters and other elements.
Ms. Faulkner said that after exploring Pixton, students wrote the stories in their writer’s notebooks before going back and adding descriptive text to the caption boxes and dialogue to the word bubbles. For students learning remotely, Ms. Smith and Ms. Faulkner could see their screens and give feedback.
“This really took their writing to another level,” Ms. Faulkner said. “It brought their stories to life.”