The Writing Life

Do you know anyone who makes his or her living by writing?

Some people make their livings as bloggers.  Blogging is a type of writing gaining great popularity in the technologically driven modern world.

Other people make their livings as authors of books.   They could write fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or drama.

Others write educational materials to help teachers and students learn as much as possible about the world around them.

We are investigating all these types of writing in our classroom this month.

In addition to launching our student blogs, we are writing stories, poems, dramas, biographies, essays, and even recipes about topics we love and then including complementary activities for teachers to use in their classes every year.   This writing will be published in traditional, hard cover books.  Our deadline is the Ides of March. 

This week we divided ourselves into publishing houses.  Each house will research, author, edit, illustrate, and publish its own book. 

Here are some photos of us organizing our teams. After deciding on the subjects of our books, each author chose a topic, a genre, and an activity.   Our upcoming books include:

Hoop Legends: Look for essays, biographies, and stories featuring Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Dr. J, and Magic Johnson.
World Myths: You’ll find retellings of ancient myths from six of the seven continents.
Fabulous Food: Reach for this cookbook when you want a healthy recipe and an entertaining story about the dish.
Teddy Tours Ancient Greece: Teddy escapes his family again in the third book of the series Teddy Tours . This time the crazy canine cavorts around ancient artifacts in Athens.
Sports Around the World: Learn about the history, regulations, and athletes of netball, lacrosse, jai alai, motorcross, soccer, and baseball.

What do you think is the best part of being a professional writer?

What do you think is the most difficult part of being a professional writer?

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5 thoughts on “The Writing Life

  1. Hi there everyone from Hey, Kids! I loved reading how you are becoming better writers and authors in your class, it sounds fantastic! Last year we used a program called flipsnack to make ebooks that we embedded into our blogs, but we have never made a real life hard copy of a book. We look forward to watching your journey throughout your writing process! Happy writing, from Mrs. Sinnott and 5/6 S

  2. I just saw that one of your books was about netball! I love, love, love netball and play regularly! Our team even won the state country championship last year! I would love to read that book…and if you have any questions I would be happy to help out,
    Mrs. Sinnott

    • G’day Mrs. Sinnot and 5/6 S,
      Our student, Aaron, got the idea to write about netball from watching your videoscribe! His group is writing about sports in different parts of the world. We don’t have netball in the United States, and none of us had ever even heard of it before. Aaron watched a couple of videos about netball to see how the game is played and to learn some of the rules. He is a great basketball player, so netball caught his interest. Thanks for the offer to answer questions. I will send him your way!
      I will also look into flipsnack. You have LOTS of neat programs on your blog. We are learning a lot from you and your class about making our blog more engaging.
      Keep up the great work in your Learning Lair,
      Mrs. Donofrio

  3. Hey Mrs.Donofrio! I wanted to answer your question about being a writer, so I have the question and the answer underneath this paragraph.

    What do you think is the best part of being a professional writer?

    When your book or poem is published and you get all the glory .

    What do you think is the most difficult part of being a professional writer?

    When you’re in the middle of the book and you just can’t think of something to write and you just sit there for hours thinking what to do.

    • I agree, Hannah! I think another hard part of writing is doing all the behind the scenes work to find a publisher who will publish your book in the first place. Another great part: the day the publisher calls to say, “We’d like to publish your book!”

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