We made it to week 12! Yay! Today is the last post of our 12-week series called Simple Writing for Primary Grades {a collaboration of The Measured Mom and This Reading Mama}. I hope that you have gleaned a new strategy or two to use with your student(s). If you are new to this series, you can read the introduction as well as visit all the links HERE.

Simple Writing Lesson #12: Share your writing {a publishing strategy}

Publishing their writing gives kids such an accomplished feeling. They are usually very proud of the finished product. But it ain’t over, yet! 🙂 Kids also need to SHARE their writing with others. In a classroom setting, their are peer audiences all around who can listen, but at home, the audience is much smaller. But don’t underestimate the power of that small audience! Today, I want to tackle what to do when your child asks:

“What do I do after I have published my writing?”

How to teach it: 

1) Prepare your materials.

• Your child should have his or her final published work.
• An audience {we’ll get to this in a minute}
• A “My Autographs” {free printable…keep scrolling}

2) Model Reading with Expression.

“I love how your duck story turned out! You have worked very hard over the past couple of weeks and I think it looks fantastic. Now, we’ve been saying from the get-go that we always want to keep the reader in mind as we write. Others can now read your work and enjoy it now.

“But, how much fun would it be that YOU, the very author of this story, get to read it aloud and share it with others? You know the story the best because you’re the very creator of it. You know exactly how you want it to sound when it’s read.

“So, here’s what we are going to do. We are going to practice reading through it a few times to make sure when it’s read, it sounds as good as it is.”

I model on the first page, reading the sentences with expression.

3) Ask your child to read with expression.

After I’m finished, I say, “Did you notice how I sounded? I sounded as if I was telling you a story instead of reading you a story. Now, you give it a try. Can you read it aloud with expression like I did?”

If your child is unable to read his text with fluency, try these simple ideas:

• Break it into smaller chunks- Try using only one sentence at a time or one phrase at a time
• Echo read- You read the sentences first, he echoes you
• Read more than once- Most of the time, fluency comes through re-reading, not upon the initial reading of a text. Although your child knows this story well, he may need to practice a little bit more with using expression.

Asking Kids to Read Their Own Writing is Highly Effective

1. It gives them an authentic reason to re-read text. {And this is one of the reasons why I think it’s important that the spelling, punctuation, etc. is edited in a conventional way~they will be exposed to it over and over again.}
2. It is especially effective for struggling readers. What better text to have a struggling reader use? They have loads of prior knowledge, high motivation and interest in the text!
3. Do you have an advanced reader? It can be such a blessing and a curse at the same time. For example, if you have a 1st grader reading on a 5th grade level, you may not want him exposed to the content in a 5th grade level book! When kids can use their own writing as reading texts, it’s a perfect match! 🙂 LOVE IT!

4) Share Your Writing by Reading it Aloud to Someone

Once your child feels comfortable reading with expression, read to an audience. In a school setting, an audience comes naturally as peers read to one another. The home setting can have its challenges for authentic audiences, but don’t forget about siblings, mom, dad, grandma/grandpa or even the next door neighbor. {You can read more ideas for creating authentic audiences for your child at home in my guest post for Not Consumed.}

A simple idea you can add is asking the listener to sign his or her autograph on “My Autographs” page {free download, click HERE or on image above}. The reader can even add the title of the writing read aloud at the top of the page first.

On a complete side note~ I just have to share excerpts of ALuv’s cute story, written at the end of 1st grade. He wrote a spin-off of Duck on a Bike by David Shannon and typed it up to create a book. The clip art came from www.clipart.com.

My all-time favorite page:

5) Make the Text Accessible

Instead of filing the published work in a folder for that years’ work, make it accessible. Treat it like you do all your other books. Put it on the bookshelf with the Elephant and Piggy books. If it’s a one-page document {like poetry}, place it in a workable notebook that the child can refer to often. Use the text as a read aloud with your kids later. Treating our kids’ work with respect goes a long way in their book {pun intended}.

 

So there you have it~the final  in a 12-part series for Primary Grades. Please feel free to contact Anna (of The Measure Mom) or myself if you have any comments or questions. AND…we have another writing series in the works for preschoolers starting in the spring, so stay tuned for that!

Click HERE or the image above to view more simple writing lessons.

 

 

~Becky