Small Moments Make Great Stories

Second grade writers recently completed a project that encouraged them to express their creativity and writing skills in fun and relevant ways.

When 2nd grade teachers introduce narrative writing to their classes, they aim to keep their efforts focused. To facilitate this, teachers led their students to think about moments in their lives when they had strong feelings and memories, and, with time, they developed these memories into written stories. 

During a two-month period, students wrote multiple versions of their stories, undertaking the writing process from planning to drafting and revising to editing. The final step was publishing, and 2nd grade teachers Tristan Chiruvolu and Brittney Washington were excited to bring their classrooms together and turn their stories into audiobooks. 

To make this happen, each student created a cover for their audiobook, gave their “Small Moment” a punchy title, practiced reading their story to themselves and their peers and recorded their final draft with a teacher. QR codes revealed the completed covers and connected each story to the student-produced audio file. Assistant Teacher of 2-BW Anna Bonoma artfully displayed the covers in the hallway so the entire community could enjoy the students’ completed work.

Chiruvolu commented, “I was blown away by the results. Students were so empowered to revise and edit their own writing to make sure their audiobook sounded professional. Using the audiobook medium also allowed the students to show off the reading fluency skills we worked on during our Reading Workshop.”

All are welcome to listen to the 2nd grade Small Moment stories here and see photos here.