Tell your second grade students they are going to learn how to write a book or a short story. Introduce each step of the writing process one at a time. The writing steps are prewriting, writing, revising, editing and publishing.
Describe the first step of the writing process, which is called prewriting or brainstorming. Direct the class to a simple idea like letting them make up a fairy tale or write about their families. You can have your students come up with ideas and write each idea on the chalkboard, or you can choose the topic. Some good examples you can suggest are writing about a day they had at the beach, an outing with a family or friends, a trip, a make-believe story about a prince and a princess or some kind of adventure.
Choose the topic your students will write about. Tell the class to write their ideas on the writing prompt you've given them on a piece of paper. For example, if you've chosen for your students to write a fairy tale then have the class come up with ideas about the plot and characters. You can direct the class by asking the "Who, What, When, Where and Why" questions. Encourage your students to come up with character names, the setting of the story and general plot ideas. This is the writing stage.
Explain to your students strategies for organizing their ideas. Color-coding is useful because it teaches children what plot structure is and how to organize a story. Mrscarosclass.com suggests that students organize ideas into color-coded sections for each paragraph. Students should write these color-coded sections on another sheet of paper. Mrscarosclass.com states you should instruct your students to place their ideas in sections called "paragraph topics" and color-code them according to which topic each paragraph will be about.
For example, all yellow sections can be used for ideas about the exposition or beginning of the story. All red sections should have ideas about the rising action, which is the conflict the characters experience. Continue the color-coding to represent the rest of the plot's structure: climax, falling action and resolution or denouement. This is the revising stage.
Prepare your students for the writing phase by having them practice writing different kinds of sentences that they will be writing in their books. Explain the meaning of each sentence, provide the students with an example and then have each student practice writing the sentence. Have your students practice writing topic sentences, descriptive sentences that explain detail, action sentences that explain what a character is doing and narrative sentences that help narrate the story.
Assign the class practice paragraphs to write. Make sure each child writes a topic sentence followed by details and a concluding sentence. Each paragraph should use a topic, descriptive, narrative and an action sentence. Teach your students that each paragraph should flow correctly by explaining that the topic sentence should be rationally followed by action and detail sentences and ended by a concluding sentence. This will help the paragraph make sense.
Instruct your students to write a rough draft. Have each student identify the main topic of her book by writing topic sentences on a clean sheet of paper. Ask the class to write an introductory paragraph on another sheet of paper by using the first color-coded section of ideas they came up with. Have your students write out each paragraph from the color-coded sections until her rough drafts are complete. Tell them to include one or two paragraphs per page, and to draw a picture every second or third page, which shows what is happening in one of the paragraphs. It's your choice to let your students color their drawings, since this is just a rough draft.
Help your children edit and proofread each rough draft. State that this is the revising and editing phase of writing a book. Direct each student to read his story out loud and correct any mistakes that become apparent. Help your students revise their sentences if they are incorrect. The students should be able to identify if the sentences are formed correctly. Revising should be easy since the students are using pencils. Scan the students' illustrations to confirm that the pictures match the paragraphs.
Distribute blank white hardcover books to each student and have them format each book the same way the rough drafts are organized. Allow your students to write and draw on each side of the paper. Tell the class to copy their stories and drawings onto each blank book and have them color the illustrations.
When they are done, have your students come up with titles and design creative covers for their books.
Have students read their books to the class. Explain how this parallels the publishing process.