My class is all about representing what they see these days. While looking at a book with cutaway pictures of airplanes, a child made this picture (he added the "fire" coming out of the engines). Pretty amazing....
Another child watched for a little bit, then decided to find another book about fire trucks and look what he did.
A third child watched all of this and made his own fire truck, then brought me the picture and asked me to "write the words". This isn't anything new, but they don't usually ask me to do it without prompting. This is a perfect example of how children will learn from each other if we can leave them alone for a minute. You should have heard all the discussion about this part and that part of each of these vehicles!
Also, none of these children are what I would call "Enthusiastic Writers". But once they found something they were interested in, there was no stopping them.
Next time we were outside, we noticed some really cool plants, and one of my friends told me that the ferns were around when dinosaurs lived (photos below are from our playground, today....).
This was pretty cool, so we brought one in so he could share this information with the class, and then we put these out on the science table for observation.
Documenting what they see....
Labeling with the information he had, "These lived when dinosaurs lived."
Another invitation, this time in the writing center.
In this case, children chose the natural material they wanted to look at closely, and illustrated them. If they wanted to add labels, we helped with that.
Again, I can't stress enough how important observation among peers is here. Not only is the observer learning (look how closely she is watching!), but the writer gets to experience being a leader and feeling like the "teacher". We always say that we are all learners in our classroom, and this is what we mean.
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