6. Making your own book - Telling real stories

Viewing guide

Before

Teacher to:

introduce the idea of student writing their own book
elicit discussion on the lessons learned from the previous class book process.

Students to:

write a reflection on what they learned about the writing process from the class book creation process
review their book idea from the first lesson based on their new learning, what would they change?

After

Students to:

discuss the comments Alison Lester made about her early work, how did that help her become a published author?
discuss whether they would like to read stories about people their age living on a farm? Why or why not?
write a journal entry about their book, is it a real story? What do they know lots about, what parts of their life might be interesting to someone living in a different state or country to them?

Teaching notes

In this lesson students will begin the process of creating an individual book, telling a real story about their life. The resource assumes that the book may be a picture book or a chapter book. Activities include suggestions for creating some artwork and images, but these activities can be excluded if students are only working on a chapter book.

Students will first reflect on the writing and editing process as covered in the earlier activities around making a class book and then apply their learning to a new individual text.

Depending on the class this activity can be combined with later activities to create a longer lesson.

Learning intention

Completing this activity affords students the opportunity to:

communicate effectively for a variety of audiences and purposes using increasingly challenging topics, ideas, issues and language forms and features (EN3-1A)
compose, edit and present well-structured and coherent texts (EN3-2A)
identify and consider how different viewpoints of their world, including aspects of culture, are represented in texts (EN3-8D)
recognise, reflect on and assess their strengths as a learner (EN3-9E).

Transcript

Alison Lester: I thought you might like to see this book, which is the first book that I ever did. I did this one when, I think I did it when I was ten, I'd have to have a bit of a look at the date. It's very ancient. It's older than all your mums and dads, I bet. It might have a date written on it, Grade 4, so I was probably about eight or ten, I suppose, and it's called 'The Secret of St Clares' and it's really a terrible book. Like, no-one would look at this and go, 'Oh this kid's obviously going to illustrate and write children's books when she grows up.' Instead of doing a story about what I was doing then, which was like living on a farm, riding my horse and and having a good time, I wrote this stupid story about an English girls' boarding school because that was the sort of stuff I loved reading and it's a bit like now, sometimes when kids get a chance to write stories they do Harry Potter-type stories and it's always better to do your own sort of book.