Lesson Plan Overview

Students created a classroom book to take home using Kid Pix software. This promising practice provided a high level of motivation for reading and writing through the use of technology in daily literacy activies that included singing the Alphabet song, identifying letters and sounds, reading aloud, and participating in other letter/sound activities. The interactive reading program was used to support decoding and other phonics skills. The writing activity enhanced students' learning of sight words (is, on, the) done in their reading and word work programs as students used these words to scaffold their writing.

After the teacher demonstrated how to use the software program, students wrote drafts of their sentences, which contained "invented" spelling. They then drew corresponding pictures in Kid Pix. Each student's sentence(s) and artwork made up one page in the total book.

The order in which the project was created is as follows:

1. Explore Phonics in the Context of a Story.

2. Mini-lesson to Introduce Children to the Publishing Project.

3. Students Write a Draft.

4. Students Create Their "Pages" on the Computer.

5. Teacher Assembles Books For Use in the Classroom and at Home.