Tutorial: A Writing Portfolder (Assignments, Slideshows, and Step-by-Step Instructions Included!)

It's finished! The portfolder tutorial with eleven mini-books is ready for you to try with your students. You can find it here.

An Olympic Project

With a week down and a week to go in the Sochi Olympic Games, are you ready for your kids to research and write about them?

When the Games were in China, I certainly was. To justify the many hours in the basement watching TV, I asked my girls to work together on an alphabet project. Their task was to think of a relevant topic for each letter of the alphabet, divvy up the letters, research and write short pieces about their topics, and display the finished pieces on a tri-fold display board.

My passive observers suddenly became active learners. They were required to think, observe, research, write and revise, cooperate, and display their learning creatively.

To help you begin, I've listed the topics my girls chose to highlight. The words in bold are applicable for any Olympic Games.

A rchery: a brief explanation of the sport and some of the winners in 2008

B ird's Nest Stadium: information about the size and cost of the stadium, and the time it took to construct it; a picture of the stadium

C eremonies: a description of the opening ceremony

D ecathlon: an outline of the two days of events

E questrian: a brief explanation of the sport

F encing: bullet points explaining the event as well as a picture of the gold medalist

G ymnastics: descriptions of four events

H istory: a short story of a fictional man who won the first games in 776 BC

I nspiring story: a true story highlighting the humility of one of the athletes during competition

J ohnson, Shawn: a short biography of this admired gymnast

K ey competitors: short biographies of favorite competitors in the Games

L ocation:  interesting information about China, including language, currency, time difference, population, famous landmarks, and popular religions

M otto: the motto of the Olympics

N ow and then: a Venn diagram comparing the original and 2008 Olympic Games

O ath: the oaths that the competitors and judges must pledge

P helps, Michael: a short biography of this accomplished swimmer

Q ualification: the process athletes go through to compete in the Olympics

R ings: a drawing of the Olympic Rings

S ponsors: two descriptions of commercials

T riathlon: a brief explanation of the event

U nderwater sports: a bulleted list of interesting information

V ictories: the medal count for the top three countries

W ater cube: a brief introduction to the location where the water sports occurred

eX tra special Olympics: a brief introduction to the Special Olympics, including its beginnings

Y ip yip hooray: a sentence telling how many world records and how many Olympic records were broken

Z illions of fans: quotes from friends (gleaned through e-mail) about which of the games is their favorite and why

Too much to accomplish in the next week or two? Invite another family to work with you. Or adapt the project to fit your students and the time you have available. (One possibility is to use the letters from SOCHI OLYMPICS, WINTER OLYMPICS, or simply OLYMPICS.) The point isn't to re-create what we did but to connect learning with current events. And to have something to show for all those hours in front of the flat-screen.

Making a Magazine

Who: Any age

What: "Publish" a magazine about a topic/theme of the student's choice

How:
Collect a variety of magazines for your students to browse, or look through the magazine collection at your local library.

List the types of pieces included in the magazines.

Invite students to brainstorm possible themes for their own magazines (e.g. sports, fashion, animals, adventure, current events, history).

The assignment (to be modified to your situation)

• Write and revise at least five substantial* pieces: articles, advice column, interview, etc.
• Make at least  four miscellaneous pieces: puzzles, advertisements, comic strips, etc.
• Make a cover and a Table of Contents.
• Put it all together in an attractive presentation.

           
        *You can define substantial for your students.

Set a deadline. (Remember that too little time may result in rushed products, but too much time may encourage procrastination.)

Ask students to write a proposal for you, their publisher. With their best writing, they need to explain their vision for the magazine.

       Possible content to include:

• An explanation of the topic/theme and why they chose it
• A brief overview of the pieces they plan to write
• A brief overview of the extras they will include
• A  plan for how they will budget their time to meet the deadline
• An explanation of  how they hope their completed magazine will look

As the publisher, you need to approve the proposal or return it for further work.

Set aside time each day for researching, planning, writing, revising, and laying out the magazine. To help students stay on target, consider giving them a chart for setting goals and recording completed work.

Magazines may be bound in regular binders or taken to an office supply store for  coil or spiral binding.

Please send me pictures!  I want to see the results. : )

My Favorite Writing Projects

Short writing exercises and stand-alone assignments have their place, but when I am looking to foster increased motivation, I daydream about projects. What projects can I suggest that will hook and keep a kid's attention?

Ones that have worked well for me so far are...

Magazines: I love this one because students are free to follow their creativity. You can find an explanation here.

Portfolders (aka lapbooks) - Portfolders kept our family busy for years. You can read why I like them so much and take a peek into some of ours here.

Notebooks - When we were ready to venture beyond portfolders, we headed to notebooks. I show some of them here.

Pen Pal Project - I tried this idea with a group of eighth graders. You can read more about it here.

Coil or spiral bound book - What's better: to have a bunch of writing pieces spread here and there or to have the best ones bound together in a book?  I think the latter. See a post here.

Blog - When my girls were young writers, the four of us started a blog.  It gave them a reason to write and an audience outside of our home. It's old, but it's here. For an AP History class, my oldest daughter made blogs for Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Adams. So many possibilities!

If you're noticing your students plodding through their work, the vision for learning lost, introduce a project centered on a subject they love.

See if the sparkle returns.

Coilbound Books

Year ago I offered a class in my home. The objective for the students was simple:  to write a variety of pieces to include in a coilbound book. The students included a cover, Table of Contents, dedication, and About the Author. Simple but effective.

Your students can make their own books, too. Maybe they have ten (or so) pieces scattered on notebook paper. Have them walk through the writing process for each one, moving the pieces from rough to polished. Or maybe you're at a loss for what should go in the book. If that's the case, browse through the ideas in Inspiration. Choose assignments that will interest your students and get them writing.

Details to Consider:

• Because these are polished pieces, they need titles.
• Typing the pieces will make the books look crisp and finished.
• You will have a sturdier book if you print the text on cardstock.
• Illustrations would add a nice touch.
• I highly recommend the extras: the cover, Table of Contents, dedication, and About the Author.
• Binding is available at office supply stores. It's fast and it's cheap.

Once the books are ready, set them on the coffee table where family and visitors can page through them. Don't be surprised if you find the authors looking through them as well. They'll be that proud!

A Mini-Study on Helen Keller

When I mentored a young history buff this past summer, I asked her to choose a person or event to study. She chose Helen Keller. I brainstormed fun and challenging writing assignments for her, which I now share with you! Use the ideas as stand-alone assignments or in a project.

Project Ideas:

• Make a blank book with Keller as the subject.
• Display the assignments in a portfolder with various flaps and folds.
• Print each piece on cardstock and compile the collection in a book with coil binding, comb binding, strip binding, or book-style binding, available at office supply stores.
• If you have multiple students completing the assignments, make a book (similar to the previous idea) with chapters. Students can brainstorm creative titles for each section.

Assignments:

Do a KWL chart. 

Set aside time (one hour?) when you’re doing something with others—playing with friends or sisters, helping Mom in the kitchen—to be deaf, blind, and mute (any or all). Write about your experience.

Read about one of Helen’s many temper tantrums. Write about the incident, once from Helen’s point-of-view, once from Annie’s.

"Interview" Annie or Helen.

What lessons can we learn from Helen’s life?  Write a paper with an engaging lead and a satisfying conclusion.

What word best describes Helen? Write a paragraph with several examples.

Write a poem about Helen and/or Annie. Find some structures here.

Write a scene based on the picture below. Be sure to answer who, what, when, where, why, and how. Include the senses.

~Helen Keller & Annie Sullivan - July, 1888~ Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Write a quote from Keller's autobiography in braille.

Your own ideas (I never assume my ideas are the only or best ones. Getting you out of the gate is my goal.)

Reusing Book Jackets

 

You know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but these covers do not contain what you may suppose. You likely assume that the authors of these books are Doreen Cronin, Janice M. Del Negro, and Audrey Wood. If so, you are wrong. In fact, the authors are my daughters.

The local library had a crate of extra book jackets to give away, so I took a pile of them.  The girls each chose their favorite one; then, using clues from the title and cover illustration, they wrote their own stories.

To make these books a little sturdier, we glued pieces of cardstock inside the front and back covers; we also printed their stories on cardstock.  To hold it all together, we anchored the pages by stapling along the left side.

After they were finished, we found the original stories to read and compare.

This simple idea inspires creativity while giving kids a starting point, taking away the dread of filling a blank piece of paper, and leaving them with real writing they will be eager to share.

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Not into fiction?  Find a jacket for a non-fiction book.  I tutored a boy who would rather trap and skin mice than read or write. He chose the Amazing Sharks! book cover, researched his favorite sharks, wrote a paragraph about each one, and drew simple illustrations to go with his text. It still wasn't as riveting as playing with mice, but at least he could accomplish his mom's goals while studying nature, his other passion.