How First Grade Writing Can Influence a Global Audience

Business cards with logos and
QR codes makes it easy to find our site!

First graders got a lesson in writing for a global audience and corporate branding this spring. Students in Ms. O'Connor and Mrs. Lamonaca's classes authored their own consumer reviews web sites. This Kid Advisory project is an offshoot of their literacy unit on Opinion writing. Students wrote about books, museums, restaurants, vacation spots, and more for the purpose of steering readers towards some of their favorites.

Children today are growing up in what is often called a "participatory culture." They have access to technology that allows them to share their ideas and perspectives with people all around the world. For example, Think YouTube. Think Instagram. The youngest audience members may be passive viewers today. But how long before they become active participants? Liking. Commenting. Sharing. Creating. Uploading.

Ms. O'Connor's class consumer
reviews site.

This is a powerful digital literacy and communications opportunity that comes with tremendous responsibility. But with the proper learning experiences and guidance from teachers (and parents) even first graders can begin to grasp how to craft their message in order to reach and influence so many people. This idea of connecting with an authentic audience becomes more clear when they see their words on a web site and learn that this web site can be seen by anyone -- in the world!

This Kid Advisory project also included a marketing element and the concept of branding. We learned that before our audience could trust and value our opinions they needed to know who we are. In Mrs. Lamonaca's class we created an identity that was packaged in a name, logo, and slogan. We brainstormed and ultimately riffed off the name Yelp. We became Snelp as in-- we were told-- "It's like Yelp, but it's information in a snap." That made total sense. "Snelp -- it's as easy as a snap," became our slogan. So then we needed a logo. An icon. An animal. We brainstormed.

Logos need to be appealing and
recognizable. Our crab is friendly.

What snaps? We searched through our bins of books. Alligators. Crabs. Turtles. Crabs can snap with pincers, almost like people can snap with their fingers. Let's go with crabs. Now let's draw a logo on Seesaw, our online journal so we can look at everyone's contributions. Ultimately, we chose Saki's crab. Cute. Soft features. Curly antennae. Pincers easy to see, non-threatening, and ready to snap!

When Ms. O'Connor and Mrs. Lamonaca held their first publishing celebration, so many guests showed up. The entire first grade, their buddy classes, Dr. Houseknecht, Mr. Yang, and even Mrs. Shain, the Assistant Superintendent. There's still a minor glitch in the web site that needs to be fixed. Our pages won't take public comments. That'll change soon we hope. We've had many readers online and offline, but once we get commenting enabled, as our web sites reach an audience far and wide, we hope to hear back from them, so we know how far and how wide.

Assistant Superintendent Lynne Shain checks out
our first grade Kid Advisory review sites.