We have three weeks until winter break in my school district. This is the perfect time for a unit about using writing as gifts. To begin this unit, we are asking students to envision possibilities for using their writing for a gift. For the first week of the study, we will be busy imagining the final projects. Students will spend time playing with ideas in their notebooks, playing with drafts, and exploring publishing options.
In the second week of the study, we’ve decided to focus on playing with words. We’ll talk about the sound of words, inventing new words, and cracking open sentences.
Finally, the third week of the study will be devoted to publication. This is an ideal opportunity to lift the level of neatness and quality of the final product. We are also exploring some options for digital publication. We are looking at Glogster, Word, and Windows MovieMaker (maybe). Do you have any other resources for digital publication?
As a celebration, on the final day of the unit students will wrap their gifts. We will spend time reflecting on our growth as writers, as well as think about our next writing projects in January. (January! Can you believe it is coming quickly?)
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Jennifer – I would love to see the unit you created. I think it sounds like a great idea to use with my students as well. Here is my email: jgreene@psd202.org
Thanks.
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Nice! I wrote a unit for reading workshop using this same idea of gift-giving/receiving. I wanted to focus on those gifts you cannot see or touch, like friendship/love, time, etc.
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My kids publish their books on tikatok. It’s a Barnes and Noble site. The books are fairly inexpensive and the parents usually order them right away!! The kids are so excited to see their work published like a “real book.” 🙂
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Great plan. My kids also enjoy Mixbook. They can share their book online but it could also be printed if the parents were willing to purchase it.
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Wordle is another fun way to use words to make a gift. Students could include character traits, memorable events and interactions, special sayings, specific words to define a relationship, etc. to make a word cloud to represent the recipient of the gift.
http://www.wordle.com
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What a great idea! May I borrow it to share with my district?
If you’re going digital, you might also consider photostory, ComicLife, PicLit, Animoto or Jigsaw Planet.
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My grade three students love publishing their stories as picture books in a digital flip book format. I use http://storyjumper.com for this. The way the pages flip is so cool. We discuss the story and how to break it into parts to draw the pictures. Have a look at Jade’s “Easter Bunny” story at this link http://www.storyjumper.com/book/index/458992/THE-EASTER-BUNNY
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