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When sitting with one of my colleagues we wanted our students to really grasp text features. We knew that they knew what text features were but they didn't seem to really want to buy into the whole unit on text features. Sooooo we made it more interesting. We explained to them that they needed to know all about text features because they were going to create their own e-books and be published authors.
We first had them Skype with an author on World Read Aloud Day which really helped our students understand the writing process, and how much time an author puts into writing a book. The author we Skyped with was K.E. Rocha who is the author of Secrets of Bearhaven link below.
Meet the Author of Secrets of Bearhaven
Then we started our students on their writing journey. They were going to write a non-fiction book about an animal, and had to include text features within their E-book. They were given a Google slides that was teacher created with their timeline, and research notes. Below is a preview of what the Google slides looked like.
Click here for the E-book Research Project
Students were given an overview of their project. This helped students know that what they were going to work on, and if for some reason they forgot the assignment they could go back too. Within this Google slides students also had a list of text features that they had to use in their E-book which made them have to concentrate on what each text feature was, and the components that went into the text features.
When we Skyped with the author she explained to students that she had a deadline so I related this back to students and why they had their own schedule to follow each day.
Note: Two column notes were used in this project to help students research. Our district is heavily involved in AVID so we created a two column note on Google slides.
Once students finished their research they began creating their E-books. The E-book was also created in a Google slides. The E-book template was left blank because I wanted students to be able to design their own themes, and create the templates the way they wanted.
Examples of Finished E-Books
Examples of Finished E-Books
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