Young Authors

Meet Our Authors

Springtime is always the perfect time for our annual Young Authors Showcase.  This was our 6th year of celebrating the fabulous writing that our kindergarten curriculum produces.

The munchkins worked very hard for several weeks to create an original story.  They used a graphic organizer to prepare their ideas, setting up their characters, settings, as well as sequencing a beginning, middle and end.  They also use the graphic to determine what type of problem / solution their plots will have.

After the story is organized, the munchkins work on putting together the sentences necessary to make it all come together.  Many of them choose a pattern to follow, giving their stories predictability and cohesion.

The munchkins love the next step...the computer lab!  Everyone discovers the fun of publishing the story using the computer.  Each munchkin chooses his or her own font, type size and font color. 

Cool!

After the stories and published and printed, they are illustrated. 

Parents and special VIPs are invited to the school for our Showcase in which the munchkins read their stories aloud to the audience.  This year was a huge success!



What a fantastic group of Young Authors!

Congratulations, Munchkins!

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.

Young Authors

5th Annual Young Authors 

Showcase

Every Spring, the kindergarten munchkins write, edit, type, illustrate and publish an original story all on their own.  This is quite the undertaking for them, but with time and effort, the finished products are always amazing and we take a day at their completion to share them with family and friends.  We call this our Young Authors Showcase.

As a bit of background...

One area of our Language Arts curriculum has us learning about story structure.  We learn all about how a story must have a beginning, a middle and an end.  We discuss that many stories have problems near the beginning that need solutions at the end.  We also learn the important aspects of character and setting.  

After almost a full year of reinforcing all those concepts, the munchkins used all that information as they thought about what kind of story they wished to create.  They each used a story planner to jot down ideas and help them compose the outline of their story.  And then they set to work.  We spent many a-day building the sentences that would become our stories.  Most of the munchkins created stories that had another interesting aspect that we encounter often in our classroom:  patterned text. 

That was really only the beginning, though!  After the story was written, the munchkins made several visits to our Junior High computer lab where they learned to log in, open a word document, manipulate text size and font, center, align, save and print.  Wow!

With illustrations added, they were nothing short of masterpieces!

And our family loved hearing them!  Be sure to visit our SchoolTube channel and listen to them all!

 

Our 2011 St. Mary's Young Authors

Until next time...

Giggles,

Mrs. D.