2nd Authors and Illustrators

Brittany Long
2nd Grade English Language Arts

Common Core Standards:

Key Ideas and Details
RL.2.1 Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate
understanding of key details in a text.

Craft and Structure

RL.2.5 Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story
and the ending concludes the action.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

RL.2.7 Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate
understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.

Text Types and Purpose

W.2.3 Write narratives to recount a well elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to
describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide a sense of
closure

Lesson Summary:
During this lesson students will be learning how to identify the elements of a story. Students will begin to gain
this knowledge through group reading and discussions. After becoming familiar with these topics the students
will begin to create their own books using a program called Wixie. Wixie is similar to a Microsoft Power Point
but seems to be more user friendly for children. Before the students begin to create their books using Wixie the
students will be asked to develop all the elements their story will need. The students will be asked to create a
plot (beginning, climax, and end), characters, a theme, a setting, cover page, a glossary, and an about the
author page. After the students have all written and illustrated their book they will be switching books. After
switching short stories with fellow classmates the students will be asked to perform a peer review. This peer
review will help the students get experience identifying elements of stories and be part of the students post-
assessment.
Estimated Duration:
I am planning for this lesson to take about 245 minutes. I plan for this 245 minute lesson to be divided into 5
days with the first 4 days lasting 50 minutes and the last day lasting 45 minutes.

Commentary:
My plan for getting the children hooked into the lesson is to show the students what other students their age
all over the country have made. I also will get the students excited to become authors of their very own short
stories. I am genuinely excited about this lesson and will hope that my excitement will be contagious! I will
begin my lesson by getting the students hooked and excited to get started. I will give the students enough
background knowledge on the elements of a story and on Wixie (the program they will use to write and
illustrate their book). I hope that this will give the students the confidence to excel at this. I anticipate the
students will be easily distracted with Wixie because of the endless possibilities. To eliminate the likelihood of
distraction I will allow the students extra time to explore the program as a class on a Smart Board and also
allow them to have time to play around with the program on their own laptop. In addition I also plan to be
totally available to the students to assist with any issues they may have. I also hope that being present with the
students every step of the way for this lesson will help keep the children on track with what they are doing.

Instructional Procedures:
Day 1-
First 5 Minutes: I will begin a class discussion about what and author is and what an illustrator is.
10 Minutes: I will introduce the book The Giving Tree written by Shel Silverstein to the classroom. I will ask if
anyone can show me where the author and illustrators name is located. After we discover who wrote and
illustrated the book I will read the book to the classroom. I will have this book on the Smart Board so as I read
everyone is able to see the illustrations.
15 Minutes: I will use the Smart Board to write the words: plot, setting, characters, theme, resolution, and
summary. I will then begin to go down the list of words asking the students if they know what the words mean.
After I feel the students have a clear understanding of the definition of these words I will go back through the
list of words and try to decide as a class what the answer would be to these words in regards to The Giving
Tree.
5 Minutes: I will explain to the students that they will now become authors and illustrators. I will explain to the
students that they will be responsible for creating a story that has all the appropriate parts. I will then pull up
Wixie on my Smart Board and show them two example of other students short stories from other countries. In
addition I will tell my students that the creators of these stories are students that are their age. I am hopefully
that this will excite my students and give them confidence in knowing they can do this.
5 minutes: At this point I am assuming that my students have a clear idea of what the lesson consist of. Next I
will use my Smart Board to show the students all they can do on Wixie. I will show my students how to add
pictures (both real, fake, and shapes), how to change the colors, how to type, how to add pages, and how to
navigate between pages.
Last 10 minutes: At this time I will provide my students with a start up sheet. This sheet will have a blank
section labeled characters, setting, theme, and plot. Under the plot section it will be broken down into:
beginning, climax, and resolution. I will allow the students a few minutes to begin to generate ideas and fill out
this paper.
The lesson will now be done for the day but the students will be asked to take home the paper that was handed
out and try to continue to develop their short stories.

Day 2-
First 15 Minutes: The students will begin the second day of this lesson by using this time to finish up the
development of their short stories. I will also be walking around to show students I am available to assist if
they are stuck on something or have a question.
5 Minutes: Students will now get logged into their laptops. The students login information for Wixie will be
put beside the keyboard of every students laptop.
5 Minutes: I will tell the students they are able to discover Wixie on their own before they begin illustrating
and typing their stories.
15 Minutes: The students will now be asked to begin creating their short story. I will ask that they all make a
cover page that will be similar to their book cover. On this page they should include their name as the author
and illustrator. After their cover is complete they will begin to create the pages of their short stories. I will walk
around the room to assist when necessary, make sure the students are staying on task, and make sure the
students know when they should start a new page.
5 Minutes: My students will be informed we are done with this project for the day and will be asked to save
their work and sign out.
Last 5 Minutes: After the students are logged out I will explain the homework to them. I will ask the students
to share their short story ideas with their parents. Then together with their parents I will ask that they find 3
new words that they could add to their story. I will ask that the parents help them find appropriate words and
then help the student use the internet to find the definition of the three words. I will ask that the students bring
the three new words and definitions to class the following day.

Day 3-
First 10 Minutes: Before getting started on the project for the day I will ask the students to pull out their three
new vocabulary words. I will then explain to the students what a glossary is, why a glossary is important, and
where it can be found. The students will be asked to include these three new words in their story and also
create a glossary with the three words in it. If a student had a hard time find three words and/or deciding how
to use them in their story I would work my way through them one by one to assist in finding appropriate
words.
5 Minutes: Students will go to their computers and login. After logging in they will pull up Wixie and access
their previously saved work.
20 Minutes: Students will continue to work on typing their story onto Wixie and adding illustration. I will
inform the students that their short stories should be nearing completion and that they will only have a small
amount of time to finish tomorrow.
Last 10 Minutes: I will tell the students they should now add a page to the end of their story. On this page I
will ask the students to give this page a heading called Glossary. After this the students will be asked to type
in their three words and the definition of each. I will also ask the students to put the three words in alphabetical
order. I will have a sample glossary on the Smart Board for students to reference.
Last 5 Minutes: Students will need to save their work and logout of laptops. No homework will be assigned.

Day 4-
First 5 Minutes: I will explain to the students what an About the author is and where it is located. The
students will be asked to add this to the very end of their short stories.
5 Minutes: Students will be asked to login and pull up their stories.
10 Minutes: Students will be asked to write their about me pages. I will ask that all students title this page
About the Author. Underneath the title I will give the students free range to include whatever information
about themselves they would like to. While the students are typing this page I will pull them aside one at a time
to take their picture. While they are finishing up I will upload the pictures onto a shared drive.
10 Minutes: I will show the students how to find and upload their pictures to there about the author page on my
Smart Board. The students will then be asked to follow the directions to upload their own picture to their own
Wixie.
Last 15 Minutes: Students will be given this time to finish their short stories. When they feel they are done I
will ask that they start from the beginning and read their story to make sure everything is complete.
Last 5 Minutes: Students will be asked to save their work and logout. No homework will be assigned.

Day 5:
First 5 Minutes: I will pass out to the class a peer evaluation sheet. On this sheet it will ask if the story the
student is reading has all the required parts. If the story includes the listed part the student evaluating the short
story will be asked to identify it. I will ask for the students to write both their name and the name of the person
they are reviewing.
5 Minutes: the students will be asked to login and pull up their work. Once their work was pulled up I would
ask them to get the cover page for their story pulled up. At this time I would then randomly assign students to
computers that had a peers story pulled up.
15 Minutes: The students will be asked to read the story that is in front of them and complete the evaluation
form. I will collect evaluation forms when everyone is finished.
Last 10 Minutes: At this time I will ask if anyone is interested in reading their short story to the classroom. I
will use the Smart Board to display the story of the student who is presenting.

Pre-Assessment:
Prior to starting my lesson I will give my students a matching pre-assessment worksheet. The work sheet will
be a simple and will ask the students to match the definition with the correct term. After giving this pre-
assessment I will also hold a class discussion (the class discussion was explained in further detail under day 1
of my Instructional Procedures). The class discussion will provide me with further detail on what terms are
understood and what terms may need more attention.

Scoring Guidelines:
After getting the pre-assessment matching worksheet back from my students I will make a bar graph on
my computer. I will use this bar graph to show me visually how many students are familiar with each
word. After looking at this results of this I will use this to help guide me in the classroom discussion
part of my pre-assessment. After the classroom discussion I will use my own judgment and the results
of the matching worksheet to determine which concepts require the most in-depth explanations. For
example if their were very low right answers for the term Theme and after the discussion I felt
students were still confused with this I would give this term extra time and explanation when defining
the words for the students.

Post-Assessment:
I will use two different tools to get a post-assessment. First I will look at each students short story. I will be
using a checklist to see if the student has all the required parts of a story. In addition to checking for the
elements of their story I will also be checking to make sure they included the extra pages I asked them for. This
checklist will have a total of 10 things I am looking for. The ten things I will be looking for are characters,
setting, theme, beginning, climax, resolution, cover page, glossary, about the author page, and appropriate
illustrations. If I can identify the item in the students short story they will get a check for that term or item.
The second part of my post-assessment will be looking at their peer evaluations. I will not look to see how they
graded each other I will look to see if the student could answer all the questions correctly in regards to their
peers story.

Scoring Guidelines:
I will give each check mark a point value of two. I will add all the check marks on my evaluation for
the students short story. The peer evaluations will have the same 10 items on them. The student will get
two points for every term they correctly identified in their peers story. The two scores will then be
combined. The students will then get a total score. The highest score possible will be 40 points (20
points possible on each form of evaluation). The students will get 2 points if the term is clearly
identified, 1 point if the term is somewhat identified, and 0 points if the term is not present or
incorrectly answered.

Differentiated Instructional Support

Describe how instruction can be differentiated (changed or altered) to meet the needs of gifted or accelerated
students: To meet the needs of gifted or accelerated students in the field of technology I could ask for further
requirements. For example, I could ask that these students also include a link to a website that could somehow
relate to her story or I could ask for the student to create a QR code. The QR code could be a link to her short
story or the student could put a QR code in her story that takes the reader to a related website. If the student
was gifted or accelerated in regards to English Language Arts I would ask that the student puts an example of
3-5 different types of figurative language.
Discuss additional activities you could do to meet the needs of students who might be struggling with the
material: There are several things I could do to meet the needs of students who may be struggling. One option I
could choose would to be have the student create a short story on their own. After the student got an idea for a
story I could go through the story the student created with the student and point out all the elements that were
required. If I noticed something was missing from the students story I could inform the student and help the
student add the missing information. A second option I could choose would be to find YouTube videos that
help develop a better understanding on the terms. I could then allow the student to watch the videos in class or
ask that the student watches the videos at home. After the student utilized the additional resource provided I
would meet with the student to see if the videos clarified anything or if something else would need to be done.

Extension
https://www.learner.org/interactives/story/cinderella/
This is a great website students can go to learn more information about the elements of a story and practice
identifying the elements. This website reads a story aloud while showing the text and illustrations. After the
story is complete the reader explains an individual element of a story and then asks you to identify the correct
answer to the element in question. For example, the reader reads Cinderella, explains what a setting is, and
then ask you to identify the setting of Cinderella.

Homework Options and Home Connections

For this assignment I would have two homework assignments. One assignment would be for my students to
continue to develop their story. The second would be to find 3 vocabulary words to put in their story. To make
my homework activities more technology based I could upload multiple short stories online and have a color
coordinated key. This key would indicate to students what color they should highlight elements of the short
story. For example I could ask the students to highlight characters of the story in yellow and setting
information in red. I could also find short stories on YouTube and ask the students to watch the videos and
write summaries of the videos. I could also ask the students to use the internet to find short stories on their
own. After finding a short story I would ask the students to provide me with a link and the details on the
elements of the chosen story.

Interdisciplinary Connections
I could integrate history in my lesson. When teaching the children about identifying the setting I could find
books and stories that take place in the past. This will open up my lesson to a chance for my students to learn
about past events, places, or things.
I could also integrate Art into my lesson. I could do this by finding pieces of art work and asking my students
to create a story that the piece of art reminds them of. I could read a book or story and ask the students to
create a picture, on the computer or on paper, that shows things like characters, plot, and the setting.

Materials and Resources:

For teachers Smart Board- I will need this to show my class the book I am reading, show them how
to upload their pictures, and use it to allow the students to present their stories.
Wixie Access- Wixie cost $0.75 a month per student. I was able to try a trial of Wixie
to discover how useful it is for young children.
Camera- I will need a camera or a web cam to take a photo of the student.
USB Cord- I will need this to upload their picture to the computer.
Computer- to upload photos, use internet to access the students stories, and to find the
 book I am reading so all students can see the pictures.

For students Laptops- All my students will need their own laptop to complete their short stories. I
prefer them to have Laptops instead of computers to save space.
Internet- Both at school and at home. The internet will be used to access Wixie and to
find definitions for their glossaries.

Key Vocabulary
Plot
Climax
Resolution
Setting
Theme
Character
Glossary
Author
Illustrator
Illustration

Additional Notes

This was a very fun activity!!!