Sunday 18 January 2015

The Build a book Workshop



Introduction

The Build a Book Workshop is about getting your students to create a book in a limited amount of time. They look at the whole process of how a book is made: writing, editing, selecting and rejecting, designing, illustrating and marketing. This workshop enables students to see what is involved in producing a book and motivates them to start and to complete their writing. 
They actually produce a book. It becomes a tangible object that sits on a shelf. You may also opt to have the book your students produce as an e-book and a web site if you wish. 
This process is very adaptable and can easily be used to build a book in a day, two days, a week, a month, a term or a year.
Some work needs to go on behind the scenes, some of which is quite technical, and this guide shows you the way. If the technical work is too much, we also show you ways of getting help with that as effectively as possible.
All that is described in this manual for teachers is based on the experience of producing anthologies of children’s writers with schools. All of the books have supported a charity – in two cases this was the schools own library - and in all cases students’ confidence in their writing has increased.    
The Build a Book Workshop can be extremely cross-curricular and offers your students opportunities to:
·         improve their writing
·         understand the world of publishing
·         work collaboratively
·         understand the wider community
·         support the wider community
·         understand how businesses work
·         improve their IT skills
·         take part in an enterprise activity.

This manual contains a step-by-step guide to setting up a Build a Book Workshop and making sure that a book is produced at the end of it. There are several choices at each stage of the process. It is probably a good idea to read it from cover to cover to start with and then work through it section by section when you have a clearer idea of your workshop shape. 
You may also order a book containing photocopiable resources from our web site. You may purchase this as a hard copy or as a PDF file. Also a template for formatting your book is available form out web site. 


Sunday 4 January 2015

Fibbin' Archie 10946



His mother was sitting in the lounge watching telly and drinking a cup of tea when he got back home. He grabbed the remote off her and turned on the subtitles. She snatched it back and switched the telly off altogether. Then she started the fish routine. Archie went and got his pad.
“What did the doctor say?” she wrote.
“I’ve got to go to the hospital and have some tests.”
“He couldn’t give you anything for it? It’s not earwax or anything?”
Archie shook his head. “Do you think I should stay off school?”
“What did the doctor say?”
“He said I should carry on going.” Bastard.
Mrs Raybald wagged her finger at him. “Then you’ll have to go then won’t you?”
“But mum, I can’t understand a ruddy word. What’s the point?”
“You’ll have to learn to lip-read,” she mouthed exaggerating each word and pointing to her lips. She started writing on the pad again. “And don’t they have them interactive whiteboard thingies? Can’t they write everything on that and you can keep a copy?”
“They could do that anyway and email it to me,” mumbled Archie.
His mum said something.  He didn’t know what.
“It stresses me out, Mum. The doctor said I should avoid stress.” That was as much as he was going to tell her about what the doctor thought had caused the problem.
His mother shook her head and mouthed something he didn’t get.  She pointed upstairs. He guessed she was telling him to go and do his homework. He would much rather have lain on his bed looking up at the stars. Maybe even have a wank. But he supposed she had a point. He had got rather a lot. And he didn’t want all that fuss with the bed sheets again. Somehow he could only ever manage it if he was in bed and it always made a mess. He always had to cover it up. It took all the fun out of it. Someday, sometime soon, some girl would let him do it for real. Hopefully. He suddenly remembered Red and Amanda and felt a bit sick. Yep. Best get on with his homework and stop thinking about things like that.     
He started unpacking his books. Darn. He’d forgotten his maths book. Toddles would go nuts if he didn’t give his homework in time. Perhaps Millie would have hers? She’d moved into his set now. He rushed down the stairs.
“I’m going round Grandma’s,” he shouted to his mother as he made his way towards the back door. “I need to borrow Millie’s maths book.”
Of course he didn’t hear what she replied.