Teaching Writing: Children II

Lesson 3: Making Books and Publishing Student Work

Book making

Making a real, lasting book out of one's work is a very powerful experience for students, and one that children seem to take to naturally. Even without any instruction, children love to write stories and decorate them with pictures - the two elements of a beautiful bound book.

I remember the desire to make books from my own school years. Way back in second grade, I remember taking that lined yellow paper we used to use, folding it in half, and stapling it together to form a rudimentary booklet to record my stories. That is a strong memory, and one that probably helped me to be open to the idea of my own students trying their hand at bookmaking.

In the recommended resource book, Literacy and the Book Arts, author Paul Johnson makes a strong case for the picture/word connections in literature. Chapter 2 is devoted to this topic. And if you observe students, you will see both their love of the pictures in books, and their desire to add art to their own writing. All those doodles and sketches that are done on book covers and scrap paper are just students' attempts to connect their ideas with a visual image.

Several years before I even started to think of using a Writing Workshop approach in my classroom (for more on that, see the recommended resource books - several contain wonderful and inspiring descriptions of that process) my students were making their own books. I was teaching fourth grade at the time and one of the highlights of our writing curriculum was the short story. After my students wrote, we used plain white "ditto" paper to make simple books that they then illustrated. This sticks in my mind because at that time, I was considering taking a teaching job in another state, and I was going for a series of interviews. I wanted to take along examples of the work my students were doing, and I grabbed a few of those books along with other work. When I got to the school, I was looking around before the interview and saw on display some beautiful, very nicely bound student books. At first I was afraid that our simple books would be looked upon with less than admiration by the interview committee, but I did share them at the interview, and those teachers were very impressed with what we had done. Just because they were farther along in the bookmaking process didn't mean that they didn't see the value in what we had done.

I guess what I'm saying is that it is the process that counts here. If your students can produce any kind of book, they will be the better for it and that book will be something of which they will be very proud. So, even though I will describe some "fancy" kinds of books, don't let that stop you from just giving your students paper, colored pencils and a stapler and letting them just be creative.

Having said all that - let's begin!!

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