Author Study

1st graders spent last week celebrating themselves as readers. Yes, we can all read!! We've spent our last full week of school together doing author studies on some of our favorite writers. We would always begin by watching an interview of the author to learn how they take their ideas and make them into a real published book. Then we would read a variety of books by that author and complete fun activities. We began with the hilarious Mo Willems.

Pigeon inspired stories

Inspired by Knuffle Bunny

Mo Willems always entertains us will his writing and definitely makes us laugh. We learned that every night at dinner time, Mo and his family sit down to doodle at the kitchen table. Mo explained that we should never give up on drawing, so we thought we'd give his doodling a try.

Next, we meet Laura Numeroff, who was told by 9 publishers that her books weren't good before she found someone who believed in her. She taught us to never give up. After reading many of her circlular stories, we created our own circle cookie map to sequence the events from her story If you Give a Mouse a Cookie.

Have you ever seen what Arthur looked like when Marc Brown first started drawing him? Marc Brown showed us that we never stop revising and editing our work. While reading his Arthur stories we worked on making connections. Marc Brown's stories are inspired by the events from his 3rd grade classroom. Buster was even inspired by his best friend. This allowed us to make many personal connections to his stories.

1st graders had a stupendous time learning about all these talented authors. Who knows maybe someday room 116 will be doing an author study on one of these young writers or illustrators.