Becoming Authors

Our second graders have been hard at work publishing books. Earlier in the year, we read the book The Library Mouse and it sparked an idea in the minds of my second graders to create our own classroom library full of books that they have published themselves. Now we have a section in our library center dedicated to those books for the students to browse and enjoy during independent and buddy reading times.

The process started with writing a draft that included all the parts of a story. The students peer edited their writing and conferences with me to help prefect their ideas and grammar. With every student that peer edited their work, they had an objective. The first "friend" was supposed to help the writer add details and build better sentences. The second "friend" was supposed to help with spelling and grammatical errors. When they were finally ready to conference with me, their writing was pretty close to spot on. The editing was great practice for the writer and for the editor.

After the student conferences with me about their writing, they were able put their story onto their book and illustrate their writing. When they are finished, they added an About the Author page in the back and questions that someone could ask themselves or a buddy about their story after they were finished writing.

As you can tell, the process took weeks. Every child worked at their own pace (some are still finishing up) until their writing process was complete and they have a finished book to add to our library.

The students are so excited about reading each others books and having their books read by their peers.

Our Second Grade Author's Library Section

A few of the books that have been published.