SOL: Celebrating Student Authors

Much thanks to all the participants in SOL who inspire and encourage my own writing. Special appreciation to Two Writing teachers who host this weekly event. 

The best thing about being a teacher, is how much we learn from our students. This past year I've been working with six and seven year old student writers. Last week I managed to get their published stories posted. (It's a long story about how I couldn't upload their books to our school website, but that is another tale for another time) You can access the page with all their stories here. It has an introduction that tells a bit about how their books came together.

At the end of the week they read these stories to the rest of their classes. 

Their books are filled with beautiful phrases and lines. They created interesting compelling characters. There is humour, horror, adventure, compassion and the integration of classroom learning. Some are simple stories well told. Others have complicated plot twists and turns. Friendship, in its many iterations, is a repeated theme.

When we started, many of these darlings struggled just to get words onto paper. Reading them afterwards was nearly impossible. Watching them read their stories out loud to their peers now is a confirmation of how important our work is. They have all come a very long way. 

Here are a few excerpts. Clicking on the link will take you to the book saved as a google doc.

And Abigail was the youngest. She was 17 but still liked superheroes.

A Special Princess by Ellaina

Michael went to a peaceful lake. He got on his hands and knees and drank some water. Then the last small mind control feeling just exhaled out of his heart.

The Fist by Auden

But then his dream ended because he woke up, Harry was desperate to follow his dream. His parents had told him to always follow his dreams so Harry wanted to go back to sleep and finish his dream.

The Magic Feather by Kafira

They had lots of fun hopping around on the moon because there wasn't much gravity. They collected all kinds of moon rocks.

Space Men by Liam

Suddenly Amberley saw something in the distance. It was a troupe of monkeys. No longer was she in the rain forest. She was on an island. Right there in front of her with the other monkeys, was the monkey king.

The Lost Cat by Amber

Bob and Rex became best friends. Sometime they get mad and have fights. Sometimes they cry. But they always say sorry, and they are always best friends.

The Snowman by Julian

One day she unrolled her blinds and a huge boom of light came in. The witch was amazed so she went outside and found a little girl was running by. She said, "Hi, come into my house"

The Witch and the Girl by Hannah

When Bertha got back home she went right to her room in a flash. She took off her bathrobe, put the squirrel on the table and got back to work. She got a sharp knife from the kitchen and cut the squirrel in half. Then the blood started pouring off onto the carpet. It stained so bright that it looked like raspberries. It made her feel weird and queasy.

The Baby Witch by Ava

Once upon a time there there lived a dragon. He wanted to break the castle. He whacked the castle with his tail and cracked the tower and it fell down. He took a deep breath and whooshed fire out of his mouth. The Castle burned down. Most of the people escaped and ran to the village. 

The Dragon and the Villagers by Nicolas

Some time in the next two weeks I will get together with the authors to celebrate their work with cake. I am so very proud of all of them.