Noticing Author Craft: Kevin Henkes

We've been reading lots of stories by author and illustrator Kevin Henkes recently. Over the last few days, we've notices noticed certain parts of his writing and illustrations appear in many of his books. This week, Ms. Riley told us those things we'd been noticing are part of Kevin Henkes' craft. His craft involves anything he does on purpose to make his writing look or sound a certain way. It is the art of writing!

We've read lots of Kevin Henkes books together as a class, and we began to notice that he frequently includes mouse characters in his stories, characters with "rock brain", repeating lines, multiple pictures on a page, speech bubbles in illustrations, and lots of dialogue. Some of his books even have some of the same exact characters, like a series! 

After reading lots of his stories together as a class, we then set off to read his stories and notice his craft with our reading partners. We looked through lots of different Kevin Henkes stories, and while he didn't always use the same craft in every story, there were always at least a few!

We will continue to read Kevin Henkes stories over the next few weeks, and we will even get the opportunity to write like Kevin Henkes ourselves and develop our own Author Craft! Stay tuned :)

Celebrating Kevin Henkes Through Our Writing!

This week, we celebrated the end of our Author Mentors writing unit, where we spent time studying the books and craft of author Kevin Henkes and using his craft to create our own stories. Each of our stories had mouse characters who had realistic problems and solutions. Although it was a bit tricky at first to think of a problem, we turned to ourselves and our own experiences to think about what problems our characters might face, such as unkind friends, broken bones, facing fears, and microbursts at the Stratham Fair!! 

Some of us even found ways to connect our stories by using the same characters and finding ways to link our problems and solutions! Once the final copies of our stories were complete, we celebrated our writing once again by going around the room to read each other's stories and write about what we liked most about them. 

Congratulations to all of the giraffes on another wonderful published story! 

Studying the Craft of Kevin Henkes

Whenever we read a new Kevin Henkes story, we've noticed certain parts of his writing and illustration that appear in many of his books. On Friday, Ms. Riley told us those things we'd been noticing are part of Kevin Henkes' craft. His craft involves anything he does on purpose to make his writing look or sound a certain way. It is the art of writing! 

After talking about Kevin Henkes' craft, we got to work finding those craft techniques in his stories! We worked together with our reading partners to find examples of each craft (mouse characters, comic strip pictures, lots of dialogue, talk in pictures, and repeating sentences) and wrote them down. We were lucky enough to also have the help of several other teachers that day (from SMS and beyond!), who were in observing literacy in second grade! We shared our findings with one another and found many connections across his stories.

This week, we are working hard to include many of those craft techniques in our own writing. We've especially had fun with adding those techniques into our illustrations! Our stories are coming along so well, and we've really enjoyed sharing our ideas and rough drafts with one another.