6 Read Alouds for Emerging Writers

Picture books are BY FAR one of the best ways to engage your primary students on ANY topic! Disclaimer: although I have always loved reading student writing, I will admit teaching writing wasn’t my favorite time of the day. Finding read alouds to assist my writing lessons added a meaningful piece to my writing lessons that motivated not only my students, but their teacher (ME) to love teaching emerging writing. These 6 books below will give your kiddos a chance to see other writers/illustrators in action and the goal would be to jump start their own writing careers.

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

START WITH PICTURES

I always tell my students that writing doesn’t mean a perfect sentence, or a lot of sentences. Sometimes writing is just a story told in pictures. Raymond Briggs tells a beautiful story of a nighttime adventure of this little boy and a snowman. Without complicated character building, or setting descriptions, this book doesn’t even tell you the characters’ names. It’s the most helpful book when working on drawing pictures, a starting point for most writers, noting how much can be gleaned from the pictures ( A WHOLE STORY) is definitely inspiring.

Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie DePaola

Another wordless story, Tomie DePaola in Pancakes for Breakfast, does a fabulous job showing the main character’s emotions. We can just imagine (or see through her thought bubbles) her thoughts and feelings as she goes about her business of making pancakes. I love using this story to introduce thought bubbles, and I especially appreciate that this book uses pictures instead of words in said thought bubbles. BONUS: The surprise ending captivates the audience every time!

Ralph Tells a Story by Abby Hanlon

WRITER’S BLOCK: CHOOSING A TOPIC

Thank you Abby Hanlon for the most engaging picture book about writer’s block! We have all had that student who stares at their paper the entire writing session, day after day, and as much as we like to facilitate learning as opposed to force the end product, we get frustrated by watching them STRUGGLE to just think of a topic! Ralph does this very same thing, he struggles and struggles to find his niche in writing, he cannot even think of one story to write. Until one day, he mentions an inchworm to his teacher, is encouraged to write about it, and tells the most hilarious tale of the inchworm and his baby brother. The lesson learned is that writing topics happen all of the time to us, all we have to do is recognize that stories don’t have to be complicated and can be about everyday things. A captivating book, this is definitely a must read for your emerging writer audience (and older just for plain enjoyment).

A Squiggly Story by Andrew Larsen and Mike Lowery

The boy in this story struggles with the confidence to write his own story. He is stuck comparing himself to his older sister (SO common for my own students to do) and is too nervous to jump into writing his own story! His sister encourages him to just start with a picture and as the story develops he is able to finally write his first story. The beauty of this story? His entire story, which he remembers in full detail, is written with just pictures! We all have those students who are not quite able to write words, but they do have stories worth sharing! This book highlights that writing a story doesn’t take full sentences, instead this boy remembers it and is able to verbally share his story with the help of his pictures.

One Day, The End by Rebecca Kai Dotlich

ADDING DETAILS

So your students have taken off with writing, they are drawing pictures and adding words or sentences to their pictures. However, they are ready to add more to their stories: this book is for you! This story perfectly illustrates several one sentence stories. No, it doesn’t teach you to elaborate and the author doesn’t even include examples of longer stories, but it offers an example of writing that leaves the reader wanting more! The pictures illustrate that there is so much MORE to each one sentence story that the reader isn’t satisfied. Hopefully it will help motivate your primary students to add more to their stories!

The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli

MAKING OUR OWN STORIES

Teaching primary writing involves an ample amount of modeling, and for good reason. Students need examples of how to form a sentence, how to draw a simple picture, how to add thought bubbles, how to add details, how to think of a topic… the list is endless. Our hope is that they take ALL of those examples and start to make their writing their own! This well-written story is of a girl who is writing a story for a library writing contest. She is struggling to come up with a story and in turn asks her family members for advice. The advice she gets makes the story one she doesn’t love, and in the end she decides to make the story one SHE wants to write!

Six Read Alouds to help with Teaching EMERGING WRITERS

With all the hopes and dreams we have for our students, writing is a big one!! As teachers, we would love to give our students the gift of writing their own thoughts and stories down for themselves. Hopefully these six books will help your students jump start their own writing careers!

Printable Writing Paper

If you’re looking for writing paper that is kid-friendly, has differentiated picture boxes and different types of writing line options, click through to my Writing Paper Bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers!

Happy Teaching!

Katelyn with Teaching Primary with Katelyn