In the Style of Dr. Seuss (Toggle Software Programs)

One parent asked, “Why are you teaching Dr. Seuss at grade 5?”

My reply, “We are not just reading it.  We are reading it with the purpose of writing in his style.  That’s why he’s so brilliant.  His stories are easy to read but there is a message in each of them.  The Butter Battle Book tells of the futility of war.  The Lorax has an environmental theme.  There’s a Wocket in My Pocket talks of the importance of home.  The message in Horton Hears a Who is repeated throughout the book, ‘a person’s a person no matter how small.”

I loved teaching this unit but when I became a tech teacher I no longer saw how the children composed their stories but instead spent more time on the tech side of this project. The objective was for students to create a little booklet of a story written in the Dr. Seuss style.  The story must have a moral or message.  The fifth graders were going to read their stories to their second grade buddy classes.

There are general rules of creating a booklet.  There must be cover page, a dedication page and summary page.  The exemplar (linked at the end of this post)  is missing a summary page as one of the homeroom teachers came up with that requirement.  Make sense though.  The total amount of pages in the document must be a multiple of 4 (8, 12, 16, 24, etc.). And each page should have a colorful illustration.  The students used Paintbrush to draw the illustrations.

First the students entered their stories on Word documents breaking up the story on a page where there was a natural break in the story.  Some authors were editing and revising it their stories so that the story flows in a book format. The students save their illustrations as .jpg files and then entered the pictures into their book.

After all the text and illustrations were added, then it became a tricky game of getting everything to fit in either 12 or 16 pages.  We had a few kids who only had 8 pages and a few who had 24 but most fell in the 12 or 16 count camp.  Some kids had to either make the text on the pages shorter or longer to shrink or expand the story.  They also had to resize the illustrations to also make them fit.

After the student author was finished (text and illustrations, multiple of 4 count), the students turn the document in a .pdf file. Then the tech teachers ran the document through Create Booklet which the .pdf file into a little booklet that can easily be printed.  The students could have done this themselves but the program was downloaded on one computer and it was just easier for the teacher to do all the stories at once.

In the end, we had a lot of great books to show our learning in writing and technology, read to our buddies and add to our portfolios.  With the advent of iPads, I am looking to see how we can do this whole project on the iPads.  Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Go to this link to see the exemplar.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8g_szT2et9BVFZiWEE2YmtHeEU/view?usp=sharing