Book Making
During my very first week, I noticed that our youngest learners love to tell stories. As a theater teacher, I never wanted to deny a child the opportunity to tell me a story if they really wanted to share one. So I made a rule— whenever someone had a story to share, we would find a way to make sure it was told, This began the evolution of Book Making with Miss Jess!
Rhyming Stories
Students began to organically share stories with me each day. Soon, they were collaborating with each other, designing their own stories. After sharing some of the stories students' wrote with their teachers and consulting TSG data, I received several requests to integrate rhyming words into our storytelling, directly addressing the rhyming objective. I pivoted immediately, and rhyming stories took off!
We begin by making a list of all the rhyming words we can think of. Then, I ask students for connections between some of the words, questions like "How would you use these words in a sentence?" or "What do you do with planes, with balls, etc?" "How do these words connect?" This encouraged students to make connections beyond the literal rhymes of the words by considering what the words represent themselves and how those words can be used in a dramatic situation.
After we've strung together a story, students break into groups to illustrate each of the story beats. When everything's complete, we retell the story using the pictures students have created. I then scan their pictures to make a physical copy of the book, and teachers add the story to their classroom libraries. This, in turn, creates connection between the work happening in and out of the classroom, re-addressing the TSG objectives our storymaking lessons engage with.
The Elephant Who Went On A Plane
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Call and Rall
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
 |
The Last Strawberry
In the Fall of 2019, a student proposed the idea of writing a story called The Last Strawberry. She proceeded to dictate the story to me, but as she finished, another student jumped in. He informed us that that's not at all how The Last Strawberry goes, and began to dictate his own, completely original story with the same name. This began a new conversation— can we have different stories with the same name?
After discussing the moment with other teachers, we decided to expand The Last Strawberry into a mutli-class collaborative project, in which any student with a story called The Last Strawberry could dictate it, and any student who wanted to create original artwork for the book could contribute. I put all the stories and art pieces together and "published" the book, titled, you guessed it, The Last Strawberry. Flip through our 13 page book below!
