" All About Me'' Books!! Blog #1

     Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. This post describes my first experience with the course LIT 101- Promoting Writing in the Primary Grades.  I always look forward to learning something new in Language Arts, that I can take back to my classroom to enhance. I was definitely not disappointed. As a matter of fact, what seized my attention was learning about this new writing strategy called the "All About... Book". This strategy allows students to create a little book with a few pages about ideas they may have or acquired regarding a particular topic. We were taught the strategy and even made an ‘’All About Me Book’’ where we pretended to be little kids giving information about ourselves. How exciting right? Our teacher made the entire process come alive. She began by introducing herself to us and getting us to pronounce her name. Then she asked for volunteers to introduce themselves by providing prompts such as, what they like to do, how many siblings we have, etc. After the introductions were done, she asked us if we would like to put all these bits of information into a book. We were given samples to look at so that we could have an idea of what to include in the book and how it is done.

Our teacher told us how she wanted us to organize the book and the specific items she wanted on each page. We were told where to place our illustrations as well as the written text. And then we started. It was extremely fun just drawing, writing, and coloring. I even laughed at my drawings when I saw how terrible they looked. As adults, we seldom do these little activities. It was quite relaxing and rejuvenating. At that time, I realized how easy it was to get us to write, simple as it may be. Then it made sense. Children hate writing. Many of them have mental blocks or find it very hard to organize their thoughts into words. Modelling this strategy, especially in a fun way, I believe will excite and motivate the students by stimulating their creative juices and getting them enthusiastic about writing especially when they have prompts to work with. It also allows students to work collaboratively with others to share, garner ideas, or clear up misconceptions. It is a beautiful way of getting students to become responsible for their own learning as they will engage in brainstorming, editing, revising, and in some cases, critical thinking.

 I see this strategy working well in any subject area, as a writing activity as well as an assessment tool. The children can use it as a way of expressing their ideas about the topic or can use it as a revision tool. For example, this strategy can be used for a grade 3 Math class. After teaching students, a concept through problem-solving and discussing their experiences with it, they can use this avenue to create an “All About Problem-Solving” book where they can record and share their ideas about problem-solving. For example: What is problem-solving, what I like or did not like about problem-solving, their experiences in trying to figure out the problem, how they went about solving a problem, if the strategy worked or did not work, the significance of problem-solving in math, etc. I believe it will be interesting to see some of their drawings as they capture their moments.

This strategy can be used with any class. It is easy to construct as well and cost-effective. Therefore, I recommend this strategy to teachers so that they too can use it as a tool to promote writing in their classroom.