This article, “Co-Authoring Classroom Texts: Shifting Participant Roles in Writing Activity,” by Joanne Larson and Maryrita Maier includes authorship as an important part of literacy. So, in addition to teaching students how to read and write, educators should also show children how to be an author. Learning how to be an author requires different skills than solely learning how to write letters, spell words, create sentence, format paragraphs and then from there, papers. I agree that authorship is important to teach. Having said that, the best aspect about books are their variety in genres. So, I would be careful in teaching authorship concerning limiting uniqueness. 

As with everything else that were learn, authorship not only needs to be taught, but also practiced in order to be fully understood. Before putting knowledge into physical form, the concepts are still abstract and hypothetical, and possibly less valid/ valuable.  In Maryrita Maier’s first grade class is used as a model for teaching and learning literacy as well as authorship. Maier encourages her students to learn these skills in action. She takes her students from reading about five to six books in a period of time to reading ten to twelve books in that same period of time. Her students’ success is impressive and is a valid model for future teachers.

Maier also transforms her classroom into a community, which, among other things, creates an environment of trust, communication, support, and , thus, progression in education and personal growth. As a future teacher, I will try to imitate this technique in my future classroom. I hope to utilize this technique because having this trust and support enables children to take risks in their writing, expand their ideas, and not be afraid to make mistakes. The last aspect is the most important reason for me in creating a community-classroom because we learn much more from our errors than staying meek and worrying about making mistakes/ being “wrong”. Creating a community within the classroom naturally means that the teacher must participate as much as possible as a model. So, I will share my experiences so that the students will feel comfortable sharing their experiences in their writing. Hopefully, this will encourage students to write more passionately about things they are truly interested and care about. This is important so that children want to practice their writing. As stated before, by myself and by many others, including in this article, practice is the most important part of learning.