There is nothing like seeing one of your young authors beam with pride when they are recognized as being a published author during your Writing Celebrations. Your students have grown so much throughout the year that you should do something special to honor their determination and hard work during your Writing Workshop.

And motivate them… to write more!

But first, let me share some “best practices” of how I facilitate writing celebration rituals that first lead up to my students earning a Young Author Crown!

Share Time

At the end of each Writer’s Workshop lesson, invite your students to share their finished pieces during your Writer’s Share. Ask your music teacher to donate a music stand so the children can rest their writing piece on it without having to worry about balancing it on their lap or in their hands as they hold A MICROPHONE!

Yes! Have your children read their writing pieces taking center “stage” speaking into a microphone! You can purchase a microphone on Amazon. A microphone is a total game changer! Google one!

This is especially beneficial to those students who speak quietly, are shy but still want to share their writing with others. These types of students find their voice through writing because they are hesitant to share their thoughts out loud. Yet, they WANT to share their writing voice, but they are not heard by their peers because they speak quietly. The microphone will solve this problem in a hurry!

Finally, all your students will be heard, and will teach their classmates good traits of writing. A microphone is totally worth your investment! Another great way to celebrate writing!

Try this writing cheer after one of your writers shares a completed piece:
Cheerleader:  “Lets hear it for ______!”
Class Callback: “Write on!”

Writing Portfolios

At the start of the year, you and your students work hard to organize their writing into proper paragraphs. They deserve to showcase all of their writing pieces in a Writing Portfolio. They will marvel at how much they have grown as the year progresses.

Your children will be especially proud to share their writing with their families during Open House and student-led conferences with a writing portfolio. To learn more about how to organize and prepare your writing portfolios you can find helpful tips HERE.

Writing Goals & Brag Tags

In an effort to help your students grow and to offer them the push they need to hone in on how to improve their writing skills, assign them differentiated writing goals after conferring with them. This helps hold them accountable for their growth and places the responsibility on them to grow as writers.

As they meet their goals, provide your students with a reward tag to collect in their writing portfolio as proof of their success.  When each of their goals are met, reward them with another writing goal! TeeHee! They will be eager to master each new goal and collect more and more reward tags throughout the year! To learn more about how to assign writing goals click HERE.

Differentiated Book Templates

Here is the best part! When your students are consistently writing longer writing pieces, provide them with differentiated book templates. There are several different book templates to support EVERY writer in your classroom. Some include sentence starters, while other templates only include lines, and a fourth book template has lots of lines to add details! You can find them HERE.

Differentiation is a must in the primary classroom. By providing your students with these different publishing options, every child feels that they are succeeding and growing as young authors. No one feels left out. They are succeeding at their own pace!

Their books can be stored in your Young Author bin until they go home at the end of the year.  Include this bin as part of your classroom library. The students will peruse these books all. the. time. …as if these books are leveled readers!  The biggest win? …they learn from each other’s writing craft!

Take a closer look here at our Young Author’s book bin:

Young Author Crowns and Certificates

And at last…

This is my favorite way to include writing celebrations in our Writer’s Workshop!  When one of your students publishes their first book, crown them and present them with a certificate to officially call themselves a published young author!

Your students will proudly wear these crowns all day long (much like a birthday crown). Fellow teachers and students in your building will stop your students in the hallway, at lunch and during special area classes to ask about their crown. They happily explain that they published a book! Precious!

If you would like to download the Young Author Crown and Certificates you can find them HERE.

I hope that you found these ideas helpful and can incorporate them as part of your own writing celebrations.

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