Hello and welcome back!
Today we’re doing Part II of our publishing series. The problem we’re addressing is motivating students to write. The key is to give them a purpose they can get behind. Our ultimate goal is to get them to create a publication as a class with work they are proud of… to raise money for their school! Once your students have created and edited their works that they’re going to use, collect the publications. You can write it up in Google Docs or another word processing program to compile it all. Once you’ve done this, you are ready to publish… how does one go about getting published? Answer: Smashwords! (www.smashwords.com) This is an independent publishing service that allows for users to instantly upload their works to be sold online as ebooks. Bonus: no paper, which is better for the environment. Double-bonus: have an art contest to design a cover for the book and let the students vote on the winner! Students are far more likely to invest in something that will actually benefit their community. They’ll also be creating something that is published, which is quite an accomplishment for someone their age. Imagine them instead of selling candy bars for a school fundraiser they were selling $0.99 publications that their class created? That’s a bit more personal. That’s something to take pride in, and it’s a world skill that they can take with them. Once you have your school page up on Smashwords, you can easily create a school library that can be used for fundraising purposes. You are unstoppable. Make it so!
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Greetings, fellow scholars!
I assume you’re scholars. I assume I’m a scholar. Today, I have two resources that we can explore. These resources are all about getting your students writing and, better yet, published. Today, we notice that our students tend to have an aversion to writing, but with a little ingenuity we can work around that. The first thing we need to do is to get them writing. If we’re going to get them writing, we need to give them a purpose. Our overall goal is to create a class anthology of short stories and have them publish it as a fund-raiser for the school. To personalize the writing process, get feedback, and make it a community effort, we need a safe place for them to write and interact. Today’s web-based resource is called WORDPRESS (www.wordpress.com). WordPress is a blog-based website. Students can post their writing as a blog entry. What’s better is they can see each other’s work and leave comments. Those comments, as per your expert guidelines as the teacher, are to be constructive in nature. If you don’t have something nice to say, help someone grow stronger! As a class, decide on a theme – perhaps an event, a color, a concept – and then that will be the cornerstone of the writing process. Have them write a narrative, a short story, and a poem. They’ll select their best work to be added to the anthology at the end of the semester. And that’s it! They can keep their website to blog on things like current events for cross-curricular activities, or even post reports for science and history or post learning strategies for math. Once you’ve established this resource, it can literally turn into a limitless portfolio that’s at the student’s disposal. But that may be for another day. Good luck! |
AuthorMr. Van Dyk has been teaching since 2008. He's figuring things out as he goes. Here are the things that work. He thinks. ArchivesCategories |