illustrations...

Some other glorious teachers at my school and I participated in a short online webinar several weeks ago with Katie Wood Ray. One of the things she mentioned that she's been thinking about and examining in student work recently is children's illustrations and how they can drive their writing.

I'm really looking forward to what she writes about this, because I've long found that their illustrations can be a rich, rich piece of writing. In mid-May, our class was reviewing what we'd learned about George Washington Carver. One of our learning experiences was that each child got their own copy of a book about Carver that our First Grade team wrote a couple of years ago. The children's job was to illustrate the book in a way that would let someone else who didn't know anything about Carver really learn it.

I love how different, yet detailed each of these illustrations are...



Each of these pictures is separated into two parts, with Carver studying science in one, and plants in the other. I just love the illustration of science here, with the test tube and the bubbles coming out. ♥


This student consistently likes to add labels to her illustrations -- she tells me that she thinks it helps the reader learn even more.


This one? Well, I just think the little excitement lines drawn over Carver's head in the second part of the illustration are nothing short of brilliant. I mean, it *is* exciting to study science and plants! I'll bet if Carver were to see this picture he'd agree that it's quite an accurate representation about how exciting it is to learn such things.