Hi! It’s Wednesday, June 13, 2012 and time for Language Arts at ClickSchooling!
Recommended Website:
Author Studies That Motivate Children To Write
Age Range: 5-13 (Grades K-8 approximately, with parental supervision.)
This website offers “Author Studies” that motivate children to write. The “Author Studies” feature a variety of children’s book authors and provide activities for discussion and suggested writing activities about the authors and their books. The activities were designed by elementary grade teachers for classroom use, but can be tweaked for use in the homeschool environment as well.
When you get to the site you’ll see a brief introductory message and some testimonials. Directly above those items is a drop-down menu that says “Select An Author.” Click on the arrow to see the menu of children’s book authors that includes:
- Lynne Reid Banks
- Jan Brett
- Eric Carle
- Roald Dahl
- Jean Fritz
- Jean Craighead George
- Shel Silverstein
- Chris Van Allsburg
- Avi Wohrl
Click on an author’s name and a new page opens that provides:
- The Author’s Biography
- Books By The Author
- Websites About the Author
- Ideas for Classroom Displays About the Author
- Activities – Ideas for writing projects themed around the author and/or their books
You’ll find additional ideas for implementing all of these author studies in a classroom setting.
This information can be used to motivate kids to write about a favorite author or book, or to simply spark discussions about books and authors. Just so you know, some of the links to other websites about the authors result in error messages. As always, parents should preview the material and supervise Internet use.
The link doesn’t work! :( You caught my eye with Shel Silverstein, love his poetry. I worked at Fine Arts camp themed “Where the Sidewalk Ends”, and I know the kids had a lot of fun with it. I’m curious if you know of any good writing courses for how to teach kids to write? Something that involves writing activities, like you’ve mentioned above, so it’s learning by writing, on-the-job type practice. I’m checking out Fred Lybrand’s at http://www.advanced-writing-resources.com, and so far it looks pretty good, but I’m exploring other courses as well. I like second opinions.
I hope you fix the link! This looked interesting.