Electronic
Book Contest 2000 Objective: Students will be able to make up a fable, write it, and illustrate it.
Materials: Fable books/stories, folder paper, drawing paper, crayons/watercolor, computer, scanner
Timeline: two weeks
Note: I began our fable unit two weeks prior to this lesson. Each day for a week I either read a fable to the class or had the class read it on their own. We discussed each story, the components, and what each story had in common. Then we put that information on a web. I purposely chose fables that I thought they weren't familiar with, yet some of them knew from the beginning that they were reading a fable. I wanted them to tell me what constituted a fable instead of hearing it from me. We continued to read fables for another week and then I thought they were ready to write one of their own.
Students had to make up a fable and list the components of their story (main character, problem, solution, moral, etc.) Then they wrote their story. After going through the whole writing process (first draft, edit, final draft) they typed it into the computer. It took four authoring lab periods for most students to finish. Next students did a crayon resist watercolor picture of their fable. I scanned the pictures and saved it in a folder with their text files. Those files were then matched up and pulled into the Electronic Book Contest. Thank you for doing that for us.
The students were thrilled with their entry. I know that I will do this with my class next year. However, I would choose a project in which they would compile their own text and picture.
