I recently read Kate Messner’s How to Read a Story (illus. Mark Siegel) with my 1st grade students. It is an excellent story about encouraging a love of reading. It served as a great mentor text for my students to write their own book on how to read a story.

We began by brainstorming the steps. While Messner’s book lists 10 steps, my students came up with 20 steps. They begin with a visit to the library, cover book selection and reading strategies, and end with returning the book and finding another one. I typed each step, then cut them into strips, and gave each student one (some of them two) of the strips. We used Wixie by Tech4Learning to create our book. After a quick introduction to Wixie, the students began by typing the steps and then adding stickers representing the text from the software’s built-in library, selecting a colorful background, and “signing” their names. The last step was recording the students reading each step.

The students loved worked with Wixie. They explored the software discovering several features I had not shown them and they helped each other when they got stuck. For me, this was a quick and fun project, allowing me to emphasize reading, while letting the students show their creativity.

A special bonus: I sent Kate Messner a tweet with a link to the students’ book. When I read my class her response, the students shouted, “We are going to be famous!” Thanks, Kate Messner, for helping to make our project more authentic!

Download our book from Apple’s iBooks!