Pattern Stories At Writing Time

At writing workshop we started a new unit of study focusing on Pattern Books. I have been recently reading Katie Wood Ray's books (Study Driven and Wondrous Words) and she is reminding me the importance of teaching students to read like writers.
I love the explanation below from Stephanie Parsons First Grade Writers.
Stephanie writes

Reading like writers is an abstract concept. As with any skill, you need to break it down for your students teaching them the steps along the way. The goal here is that children begin to read like writers. So what part of reading like writers comes at the beginning? What part of the work do you do for them and what part can you expect them to do? One strong way to begin reading like a writer is immersing yourself in the kind of text that you can most easily envision yourself writing. 

Stephanies' book has some fantastic units of study to help children plan, organize and structure their writing ideas. I got the idea of exploring and creating pattern books from her book.


Planning Getting Pattern Books to Read to the Class
I found so many books to use for this study.
Frank Asch Books's

I love how Frank Asch has a nature theme through out his books.  The illustrations are beautiful and these books lead easily into a classroom Shared Writing lesson. You can see below a chart we wrote as a class.

I love Todd Parr! I think his books are perfect for so many reasons. This is another example of a simple text with a powerful message! Students can easily come up with topics about special people in their lives.

I love all of these books! The pattern is perfect for young students. These books have simple sentences but the illustrations gives you so much information about the topic!!  We talked about how these books have the opposite information on each page. The author Paul always ended the last page with something different from the pattern. 

Our class chart recording some of our thinking! Below are some examples of pattern stories students are making in kindergarten. I just shared the first page or two.

 Happy News 
The bunny found a friend. 

Sad News

The Bunny lost his friend.

This train goes curvy. This train goes strait.

My big brother Christian likes little Lego's. My little brother Mark likes big Lego's.

Somewhere today a Water Snake it swimming.

Somewhere today a snake is laying 100 eggs

Some surprising outcomes from this unit of study...

Students are thinking more about how they end their stories. The majority of the pattern stories we read changed the ending in a surprising ways. Although we have talked a lot about story ending and beginnings I think reading all of these stories hit home for many kids. 

Students who struggle with sticking to a topic found success because writing pattern stories was easier to stick to the topic. 

Students were able to easily take an idea from a mentor text.I think I will see this happen more often with other books we read.

Students stories had more voice.

Students made a story connection with writing and reading pattern stories. A lot of kids made AAHA comments at reading time! WOW this book we are reading is a pattern book.