Every year I absolutely adore author celebrations. The kids embrace each other's writing so well and are so encouraging with each other. This six weeks in writers workshop we focused mostly on writing stories with complete thoughts, related sentences, correct capitalization, ending punctuation, and appropriately matching illustrations. The kids got to choose their favorite piece, fix it up to the best of their ability and "publish" it.
After all of them are completely satisfied with their published piece we have an author's celebration. I liked to start our celebration out by sitting all of their stories on their desks. I explain the kids that we are going to pretend we are at a fancy book store like Barnes and Noble and walk around the room browsing the books of famous authors. I play soft music as they take a few minutes to explore each other's stories.
After we go book browsing, I separate them into small groups. I send them in their small groups to a spot in the room where they share their stories aloud with their group.
They get so excited to hear each other's stories and to be able to get a close at their friend's illustrations.
By the way, this also took place on hat day!
The final part of our celebration is our compliment circle, which I really hope to get pictures of one day. We sit in a big circle and go around complimenting each other's work. I don't prompt them or even tell them who to compliment. They come up with their own compliments and they are absolutely sweet and honest. Some compliments included:
"I like how his pictures matched his words."
"She had really nice handwriting!"
"I loved her colorful illustration."
"His story made me laugh!"
"I liked everyone's story because we all worked really hard."
It's one of the sweetest moments!
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