Steven Layne

Steven Layne is an author study that both boys and girls love equally.  He has a unique style to his writing and a variety of genres to learn from.   The students fall in love with the voice in his books (especially, if you have the chance to hear him read the stories or listen to the audio version.) It is easy to teach an array of skills such as persuasive writing, ABC book format, story elements and more.  Each book was used as a read aloud and then from there the students created the "What we noticed..." chart together.  See below.

After carefully deciding a variety of skills to teach through Steven Layne's books, this author study was then used as a cumulative review for the school year.  The 4th grade students were asked to attempt the prewriting for four different types of stories on the below choiceboard.  This allowed them to try all of the different craft and skills prior to deciding which story to create.  It allowed the students an opportunity to choose which story they wanted to make come to life after they had thought through each prewriting form.  The "choice" factor alone is always motivational in any classroom!  In addition, the teacher has control of what skills to put on the choiceboard and can arrange these choices so that the necessary skills are being taught. This also allows for differentiation in order to meet all of the students needs.  Using choiceboards like this is a "win-win" for the students and the teacher.  Click on the Steven Layne Author Study choice board to get all four of the prewriting ideas and the choiceboard itself.

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Love the Baby (along with Stay with Sister and Share with Brother) was used to show how you can create a character's voice by using a repetitive phrase.  Students were asked to think of a time someone had repeated a phrase or message to them. They were then supposed to use this phrase to create a story around it.  Most of the time these stories also have a moral or a lesson that the main character learns or demonstrates.  Click on Love the Baby for more lesson plan ideas to use with this book.

    

Below is an example of one student's story created from the above prewriting.  Her repetitive phrase was "Do Your Homework."  She also used the "rule of three" in order to elaborate and organize her story.  You will notice she thought of three different examples of times she was told to 'do her homework.' 

My Brother Dan's Delicious is a great example of persuasive writing in a comical way.  The students practiced writing persuasively through this prewriting activity by using the power of figurative language to get their message across.  This was challenging and fun at the same time.  It was a great review of figurative language as well.  This graphic organizer is included in the packet above.  

T is for Teacher is just one of Steven Layne's many alphabet books.  The format is unique in that there are nonfiction facts for each letter and also a fictional piece that is written with amazing sentence fluency.  Creating this type of story allows students to work on many skills all in one book.

Below are a few more student examples created with the T is for Teachers organization.  

This last example comes from the last choice on the Steven Layne rubric.