Mini Authors

After completing several running records with my class, I noticed that a lot of the kids were struggling with retelling the story after they had read it. 

I thought... I wonder what could be a fun way of encouraging children to retell a story... so...

I read 'Jack and the Beanstalk' to them and explained that they were going to be authors.

They lapped it up! We spoke about how fairy tales and fables were made up a long time ago, and lots of people have  retold these stories using their own words. I chopped up some A4 paper into A5, and off they went!

Every single one of our 50 kids was on task, engaged and writing! It took some of them a while to realise they were in control and were asking "Anna...can I write this...?" or "Anna can I draw my picture now?" I told them "You are the authors & illustrators! It is entirely up to you!"

Since they were loving this task (it took them a few lessons to finish the whole book) Sasha decided to make an art lesson into the cover of their books... here is one of my cutie's finished product (oops I think I have photographed one of the pages out of order!): 

Super cute!