Columbus School 1st grade students will publish their own books in English for the first time this November, to practice expressing their thoughts by writing in a new language.

First grade students are beginners at writing complex texts and they are publishing  personal narrative stories for the first time. For them, it’s easy to come up with writing ideas and in class students share personal anecdotes to encourage writing ideas. All that’s left is practice.

According to Shirley Brice Heath, a language research specialist at Stanford University When children write their personal stories, this gives them a more clear understanding of  inference, synthesis, prediction and interpretation.

Students started writing these stories in September, and they write in class four days a week. The hardest part for students was editing since they had to be resourceful and problem solve by themselves, which is something new for them.

“Something that was really hard for me was at the end when I corrected the last mistakes; There were some words that I didn’t know in english so I needed to  research them, think about it, and finally figure out the right words,” 1st grader Sofia Gonzalez said.

For some classes, a publishing celebration day was held November 10th. Students gathered  in groups and read their shorts stories out loud. Then they gathered around the classroom library and allowed each writer  to place their book on a shelf and say something that made them proud about their work.

“I am proud of the way I wrote my story, it was really interesting, fun and made sense,”  1st grader Tomas Arango said.

Before the students published their books in their classroom libraries, the 1st grade students  visited  their 5th grade reading buddies and shared their stories with them. The 5th graders gave them feedback to improve their stories.

“First graders are writing extremely well. what they’re writing is easy to understand and it is not too long or too short,” 5th grader Laura Mesa said.

For the teachers, publishing was amazing since it was an opportunity for students to celebrate their hard work and their learning in a way that publically recognized their work.  

“Students feel accomplishment and it is special to see the results of all their hard work. They enjoy sharing their stories with others and showing all that they know, ” 1st grade teacher Daniela Orjuela said.