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Doreen Cronin, Point of View, and Book Making

As a gifted teacher, my job is really two-fold. Of course, one part being that I service my gifted students. The other main part is creating advanced enrichment groups at every grade level so students can be more appropriately challenged. Let me tell you, with 19 groups, the planning can be overwhelming! There are times when I struggle with what to plan, but this was not one of those times. A stroke of creativity hit me, and I just ran with it!

I have always had a deep love for children's books, especially when teaching older students. There tends to be such a deeper meaning, or humor, in picture books that can be missed with younger students. Some of my favorite books are the "Diary of a (spider, fly, worm)" books by Doreen Cronin. They are hilarious, and they also teach students a lot about the specific animal! They are also great for teaching point of view, which is what sparked the project that my third grade enrichment group would be working on. 

After reading these books and having a discussion about our point of view vs. the point of view of the animal, my students were going to write their own "diary" of an animal of their choosing. I advised them that they should choose a smaller animal so that the POV would be clearly different from their animal to a human. After choosing their animal, students started on some research so that real facts would be incorporated into their book. The hard part was that after researching, their goal was to transform their found facts into entertaining diary entries that mimic the style of Cronin's writing. I was amazed by some of the entries that the students came up with! I also encouraged them to write a few entires that were purely fictional and for entertainment purposes, just like Cronin does as well. We are still in the process of filling out our story boards before we move to the final product, so stay tuned to see how they turned out! 


Stop by my TPT store, or click here to grab the project for your class! My students are creating an entire book, ranging from 5-7 pages (even though some of my writers were begging to include more!), but this could easily be adapted to fit the needs of your class. You could have each student write one page and create a class book with different animals, or students could work in pairs or groups to create a book focusing on one animal as well! 

Now on to the second aspect of the project....


Book making?! Yes that is correct; my kiddos are playing the role of author, illustrator, and manufacturer for this project, and it makes me so happy. I had a professor in college that made me fall in love with children's literature; not only with the stories, but with the illustrations and how that adds to the tone of the picture book. We were assigned a project where we had to make a book from start to finish, and I decided to tackle this same project with my students. You should have heard their reactions..."We get to make a book?!" "How are we going to do that?!" Well I walked them through each step (VERRRRRY slowly, I might add, but it was totally worth it).











All of my students were able to make the covers of their books, with a little help from me. I didn't trust them to use spray adhesive so I was in charge of that part. Take a peek at my step-by-step directions (FREEBIE!) on my TPT store and you will see where spray adhesive was used. Next week they will be ready to sew the pages of their book together! Stay tuned for book making part 2. :)


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