Mary Quattlebaum's Blog, page 28

DESTINATION: Children's Books

 by Joan Waites

It’s Memorial Day, and the start of summer vacation for most schools is just around the corner. While classroom learning will soon give way to summer fun, if you are a lover of children’s books, and are interested in the art of children’s book illustration, you might want to add a stop at a location that showcases original art from classic to contemporary works.
Looking at original art up close and seeing the hand of the artist is a wonderful experience for children to have.  One of the highlights for students during my school visits this past year was showing original paintings from my books. Today’s children are so used to viewing things on a screen of some kind, that it was hard for them to believe these were “real” paintings done by hand. 
Below are a few locations to visit if your summer travels plans take you nearby.  This is not a complete list, but a sampling of what is available. Here’s wishing all our readers a great summer filled with reading, writing, and creating art!
North EastR.Michelson Galleries132 Main Street | Northampton | MA 01060 http://www.rmichelson.com/Childrens-Book-Illustrators.html
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art125 West Bay Road | Amherst, MA 01002http://www.carlemuseum.org/home
SouthMint Museum UptownLevine Centerfor the Arts500 South Tryon StreetCharlotte, NC 28202(704) 337-2000http://www.mintmuseum.org/art/exhibitions/detail/the-land-of-make-believe-children-s-book-illustrations-from-the-public-library-of-charlotte-mecklenburg-county-collection
MidwestThe St. Louis Children's Illustrated Art Museum 37 Crestwood Court,Crestwood, MO 63126 http://www.stlciam.org/
Mazza Museum
The Virginia B. Gardner Fine Arts PavilionThe University of Findlay 1000 North Main St. Findlay, OH 45840
 http://www.findlay.edu/offices/academic/mazzamuseum/Pages/default.aspx

WestNational Center for Children's Illustrated Literature102 Cedar - Abilene, Texas 79601 - (325) 673-4586 - info@nccil.orghttp://nccil.org/index.htm
The Walt Disney Family Museum104 Montgomery StreetThe Presidio, San FranciscoSan Francisco, CA 94129http://www.waltdisney.org/special-exhibitions

www.joanwaites.com

WRITING POETRY: A NOVEL APPROACH

by Jane Harrington


A creative friend of mine (okay, fellow writer and Pencil Tipsblogger Jacqueline Jules) suggested I share some writing prompts from a book of mine, My Best Friend, the Atlantic Ocean and Other Great Bodies Standing Between Me and My Life With Giulio, a novel premised upon a high school freshman’s poetry journal from her English class. (Did I really just describe the book in fewer words than make up the title?) So, here are a few ideas from the missives of my protagonista, Delia:
Describing her teacher’s efforts to get his somewhat “blocked” students to produce SOMETHING, Delia writes, “He told us we should not feel ‘constrained’ by trying to make our poetry ‘fit into a structure’ as we write it. That to become good writers we need to ‘release the words and let them flap about on the winds of our creativity.’ He says the best writing comes from free writing about anything that inspires, and that later we can edit the writing down to its most ‘vital essence.’ And that, he says, will result in good poetry.” Delia responds well to this and has much fun with “flapping words.”
In other journal entries, Delia writes about how the teacher has the students using some unlikely sources for poetic inspiration, such as cellphones. He has them write out their text messages: “so boi wut up?” one student offers as a first line, noticing a similarity to rap or “fly” when he sees his texts set up as verse. The students also get an assignment to look to popular media, specifically advertising, to find uses of poetic devices. When one student passes a note calling the whole idea bogus, sarcastic Delia responds in her journal: “Read zines and watch the tube for homework? Yeah, sounds awful.”
There are other ideas that could be www.janeharrington.com

WRITING CONNECTIONS WITH DEBBIE LEVY

by Mary Quattlebaum

Award-winning author Debbie Levy talks 1.  Thanks for visiting Pencil Tips, Debbie!  The Year of Goodbyes is such a powerful, beautiful book.  My whole family read it and loved it!  Where did you get the idea for this historical novel in verse, which is set right before World War II?  
The idea for The Year of Goodbyes wasn’t so much an idea as a discovery.  After years of trying to find a way to write my mother’s story of living as a Jewish girl in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, I discovered Mom’s poesiealbum.  (Let’s get the problem of the multi-syllabic German word out of the way:  It’s poesie, pronounced po-eh-ZEE, or poem, + album = poetry album.)  A poesiealbum is like an autograph book or friendship book. They were popular among European pre-teens and teenagers. 
I didn’t discover the poesiealbum up in some dusty attic.  My parents’ house didn’t have an attic.  No, my mother pulled it out of her bedside table when she got together with six of her childhood friends from Germany for the first time in 62 years in 2000.  (You can read about how the reunion came to be here.)  Some of them had written in it back in 1938!  If I’d seen the album when I was growing up, I didn’t remember it.  When I saw it in 2000, I was moved by this beat-up little book full of handwritten poems, proverbs, and drawings from my mother’s friends and relatives that she brought across the Atlantic Ocean when she left Germany behind in November 1938.   
I had the album translated, laid out photocopies of the pages in chronological order on the floor, and found that each entry contained a truth that related directly to the goings-on around my mother from January through November of 1938.  And so, nearly every chapter in The Year of Goodbyes opens with one of these poesiealbum entries.  Arranged chronologically, these poesies give shape to the true story of that fateful year in Nazi Germany and in my mother’s life.
2.  What triggered your new YA novel Imperfect Spiral?  I love the way you explore larger issues (immigration policy, community activism) through your vivid characters.  First-person narrator Danielle, with her wry voice and worries, seems very real.
The origins of Imperfect Spiral were musings about a character, a teenage girl, who feels, as teenagers often do, that she is unutterably peculiar, when actually she is just a little bit peculiar, as so many of us are.  I wanted her to see herself reflected in the eyes of a little boy (who may also be a little bit peculiar) who thinks she is absolutely the greatest, and with whom she develops a deep connection despite the difference in their ages.  So it was this relationship that was the spark. 
These two characters, Danielle and Humphrey, then took on lives of their own in my imagination, and so did other characters and plot ideas, and this one, in particular:  What if something terrible happened to little Humphrey, and it happened on Danielle’s watch, when she was babysitting him?  What would the consequences be for her personally?  And—as importantly, because I wanted to write a story that wasn’t only about a teen character looking inward—what would the consequences be for her community?  With this as a framework, I was able to explore such disparate ideas as unlikely friendships, immigration policy, and how even well-meaning people can twist events to suit their agendas.
The characters themselves gave me more ideas.  Their inner lives suggested situations where dramatic tension might develop, where opportunities for change would arise.  Until Humphrey has a tragic accident, Danielle has made something of an art form of not being engaged in school, community—you might even say she’s less than fully engaged in her own life.  But that becomes less of an option as reaction to the tragedy spirals, if not out of control, at least in directions that she can’t accept.   
3.  Were you a writer as a youngster or did you come to a love of writing later in life?
When I visit with students of all ages I always bring with me some of the “books” I wrote when I was around seven.  Like Something Happens To Tuggy.  The Captured Boys.  And my first foray into nonfiction:  Fish.  You can see thumbnail pictures of these on my website. 
I shared two of these early efforts with kids at the Sandy Spring Friends School Authors Fair in April and it is not much of exaggeration to say that the kids spent more time paging through them than through my books that have actually been published! (By the way, this relates to my belief in the power of handwritten works—see above, poesiealbumpages.)  I think the younger children look at these books and realize, “I can do that!” and the kids in middle school and up think they’re cute and maybe it would have been fun to babysit me when I was seven.  If, that is, they can imagine me ever having been seven.
By the way, guess who saved these early works?  My mother, of course!
4.  How have you used The Year of Goodbyes in working with young people and their writing?
When I do school assembly presentations about The Year of Goodbyes, I focus on the book behind the book (that is, the poesiealbumand its tradition), life in Germany in the 1930s for my mother’s family and others like them, and, of course, my mother’s story. I do this with the help of a PowerPoint slide show that is rich in photos and other striking images.  I also talk about the connections and contrasts between the old-fashioned poesiealbum tradition and Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. 
Then, in the more intimate classroom setting, students write and share their own “poesies” in response to a series of prompts.  I have led these writing workshops during school visits, and teachers and librarians have also done this work themselves, either using writing prompts of their own creation or prompts that I offer online.  My writing prompts are found on a “Poesiealbum Project” website I’ve put up to encourage readers to write and submit pages for a modern-day online poesiealbum.  It’s http://theyearofgoodbyes.blogspot.com/.  (The prompts are under the tab labeled “Create.”)  They include, among other things, asking students to write something:                     - to the young people in Nazi Germany in 1938 who chose to discriminate against, or torment, their  Jewish neighbors, or
                    - to friends or classmates today who choose to ridicule people they deem “undesirable” or unacceptably different, or                     - to inspire somebody who faces great adversity or fear.
Why engage in these exercises in poesiealbum-style writing?  First, this approach integrates learning about the history of the era with practice in formulating thoughtful responses to injustice in the world.  Second, I like the idea of writing a few carefully chosen words, packing as much meaning as possible into small packages.  And third, as I explain to the students, for us as writers and as denizens of the twenty-first century, one reason to try our hands at poesiealbum-type writing is simply to step back in time—to feel the historical experience of people who came before us in our bones, just a little bit, through the act of writing (with a pen or pencil on paper) as those people wrote.
I am always surprised and fulfilled by student poesiealbum writings in response to The Year of Goodbyes.  It’s very hard to single out one or two.  Have a look at these, which students have sent in to the online Poesiealbum Project:
http://theyearofgoodbyes.blogspot.com/2011/04/change-we-want-to-see.htmlhttp://theyearofgoodbyes.blogspot.com/2011/05/life-is-like-ocean.htmlhttp://theyearofgoodbyes.blogspot.com/2012/05/no-matter-who-you-are.htmlhttp://theyearofgoodbyes.blogspot.com/2012/05/look-around-slow-your-perception.html
5.  What writing prompts or exercises for young people have evolved from Imperfect Spiral?
Imperfect Spiral is woven around themes concerning friendship, fear, courage, connection, and heartbreak.  There’s also a thread relating to the topic of immigration. Not to mention the twisty spiral of unintended consequences.  So many possible topics for students to write about!  I’m just at the beginning of creating the writing connections that I hope to be making with readers once this book is in their hands.  Here are some of my ideas so far:
          - Imperfect Spiral concerns a tragedy and a community’s search for someone or something to blame for that tragedy.  Why do you think people need to find someone or something to blame when tragedy strikes—even when it’s entirely possible that the tragedy has no villains?  Write your response as an essay or a poem.  
          - Write a letter to the editor—something that could be published in a newspaper—about an accident or controversy in your own community or school that prompted a focus on someone or something to blame that you believed was misplaced, and what you think the focus should have been.
          - Given their age difference, Danielle and Humphrey obviously are at very different places in their lives.  Despite that, Humphrey teaches his teenage babysitter some important lessons.  Create a “top five” list of things Danielle learns from the little guy.     
          - In the story, we see Danielle questioned by authorities on three different occasions with respect to the accident.  Following this theme of Q-and-A, create a list of questions that you would you like Danielle to answer about the events that transpired two years earlier, when she went through a life-altering experience at her Bat Mitzvah.
6.  What are you working on at the moment?
I am working on the very beginnings of another contemporary young adult novel.  And I’m in the research and thinking stages of something that I hope will end up as a nonfiction picture book about a Civil War topic.  And who knows what fresh ideas will present themselves tomorrow!

MAPPING SUMMER PLANS

by Alison Ashley Formento
There’s a change in the air this May, with warmer days and lovely flowering plants and trees. It’s that time of year when we all feel the tug of summer. I’ve been sharing my new picture book THESE SEAS COUNT! at schools and just mentioning the ocean and research I did for this book, makes me yearn for a nice day at the beach.          What kind of plans are you making for the summer? Camping? Visiting relatives? Planting a garden? People plan summer vacations and authors make story plans, too. Some outline and some map out their ideas using visuals such as paper snowflakes or color-coded index cards. There’s no wrong way, but a story map can be a great guide to help a writer find and create a compelling plot to draw in readers.
          Happy Trails: Creating a fun vacation story map
·        Print out a map of America or use a world map http://www.colormegood.com/socialstudiesandgovernment/mapsandglobes.html ·        Ask students to choose places they’d love to travel this summer and mark them on the map. ·        Research those places and write a few sentences about what they want to see or expect to see in a particular place. Example: Grand Canyon or the Statue of Liberty·        Write up an itinerary. What is the mode of transportation? How long will this trip last? Include supplies for trip. Example: Take parka for dog sledding in Alaska·        Estimate travel costs. What will it cost for each meal? Five dollars? Or more? How about extra money for sightseeing? Use math skills to plan.·        Write a story about the trip you’re planning and what you hope to see in your travels. Encourage students to use their imaginations to share something exciting that might happen on their trip, but to include real facts about the places they hope to visit.·        Finish story by sharing how it feels to be home after this amazing trip.
Happy travels and happy writing!          www.alisonashleyformento.com

PLANNING TO WRITE: The Shrimp Cocktail Disaster

by Jacqueline Jules
In a February blog post, I discussed the use of graphic organizers  as a useful tool in pre-writing with primary school students. Pre-writing or jotting down ideas before you begin generally results in a more fleshed out story.
In addition, standardized writing tests can expect students to show some evidence of pre-writing or planning. The short essay part of the Virginia Standards of Learning Assessment includes a checklist for fifth graders, asking students to plan before they begin their written answer.
For an easy method of planning, teach your students to ask themselves a few simple questions.
First off, tell your students to answer this all important question: What is your story about? Are you relating a first experience? A funny experience? A lesson learned? An obstacle overcome?
Identifying the topic leads to the next question. What do you want your reader to feel?  Do you want your reader to laugh with you or cry? Are you trying to warn your reader  or  hoping to share a wonderful experience? Narrowing down your purpose helps you choose the best details to support your central theme.
For example, let me take you through my own planning for the following prompt: THINK BACK TO A MOMENT YOU’LL NEVER FORGET.
The moment I want to write about is something I dub “The Shrimp Cocktail Disaster.” It happened when I was in my early twenties, working as a waitress in a seafood restaurant. I was hurrying, with a huge tray of shrimp cocktails on my shoulder, to a party of twelve people in the back room of the restaurant. Just as I reached the table, I slipped on a wet spot and came crashing down, shrimp cocktails and all! The twelve hungry people at the table collectively moaned as shrimp and red sauce splattered everywhere.
“The Shrimp Cocktail Disaster” could be told in at least two different ways, if not more. Figuring out my purpose beforehand will provide focus and depth to my writing.   
First off, what is my story about? Is this a lesson learned? Don’t run with a tray of twelve shrimp cocktails? Or is it a funny experience, intended to make the reader laugh?
If I want my reader to laugh, then I should spend time describing the splattered red sauce, the shrimp flying across the room, and the awkward position of my exposed legs as I sat in the mess on the floor.       
If I want this to be a cautionary tale, I could include details about my impatience to be finished with my shift and my preoccupation with the amount of tip I could expect from such a large party that caused me to ignore what should have been an obvious spill on the floor.
Finally, I should decide the order in which I want to tell the tale. Should I begin with dropping the tray and share the details in flashback? Or should I tell the story in chronological order?
For humorous impact, it might be funnier to begin with a short slapstick teaser and then go back and tell how it happened. For a more serious account, maybe I would want to tell the story in chronological order. I could show how distracted I was and build the tension to my clumsy moment. Either way, planning ahead of time will help me focus the story and convey the meaning I intend to my reader.
So planning can all boil down to three easy questions: What am I writing about? What do I want my reader to feel? And what order should I tell my story?
www.jacquelinejules.com

NAMING YOU CHARACTER

by Mary Amato
A frequent question kids ask me is: how do you come up with your character names? I have fun with symbolism, metaphor, and connotation. The girl whose sisters tell her she is a chicken? Henrietta in The Chicken of the Family. The brothers who like to invent fun? Wilbur and Orville Riot from my Riot Brothers series.

Have fun using literary elements to create fictional character names for the following characters. There is no right or wrong. Examples are given for the first four.
A race car driver: Lefty TurnerA bus driver: Miles A. HeadA barber: Harry ShearsA smart guy: Noah LottA nurse:A horse trainer:A teacher:A dancer:An athlete:An annoying brat:A dentist:
Share ideas and be as creative as possible. You could use these characters in stories or poems.
www.maryamato.com

MEMORY QUILTS

by Joan WaitesMy last blog post described an elementary school artist-in-residence program I participated in, working with fourth grade classes. After finishing with the fourth grades, I began working with each of the fifth grades. Our assignment was to make a class art quilt, illustrating the students special memories from their time spent at the school.We began with a planning session, brainstorming ideas and doing rough sketches. Students were asked to pick one larger element to showcase, so it could be seen from a distance. Smaller details or designs were added to the background. For example, several students chose to draw the musical instrument they played in the band, adding musical notes in the background. Other students drew themselves wearing their patrol badge, chose an element representing the school fair, or drew portraits of themselves and their best friend. Because a sewn quilt was a bit too complex a task to accomplish during our allotted time, (and beyond my capabilities), we assembled the art quilts using painted fabric squares, using the following supplies:1.     Precut squares of fabric in a neutral color, approximately 8X8 inches, one per student. 2.     Any liquid type of acrylic paint-inexpensive craft acrylic paint works well.3.     Large piece of patterned background fabric, measured to accommodate as many squares made per class.4.     Old broom handle, curtain rod or even a varnished and sealed branch to hang the quilt.5.     Paintbrushes, paper cups for water, paper plates to mix paint, paper towels and plastic trash bags to protect desks. Fabric glue to assemble all parts. For embellishments: black sharpie paint pens, ribbon, buttons, beads or other elements that can be glued on to fabric.After the paint fully dried, students outlined their paintings using a black Sharpie paint pen. Beads, buttons or other embellishments were glued on top of painted squares. Squares were then glued in rows to the large patterned background fabric. Each square was then framed using strips of ribbon. Mismatched ribbon pieces add a lot of colorful interest! Most of the supplies were donated by parents as well as contributions from the PTA. We used some colorful sheets for the background fabric, and students brought in beads, ribbon etc., from home, keeping our costs down.A similar project could also be done as a writing exercise, using squares of colored or patterned paper glued to a larger background piece. Have students write a paragraph or two about their fondest school memories, or challenge them to write these in poetic form.The completed quilts will be hung and displayed first at the fifth grade graduation, then moved for permanent installation in the new school, sharing their memories with many more students in years to come.www.joanwaites.com

IT’S vs ITS: HELP!

by Jane Harrington
For those of us writers of English who were lucky enough to grow up with this language  (nothing to be taken for granted, because English is one of the very hardest languages to write properly if you are coming to it as your second language), most of the rules of grammar are entirely intuitive. Some rules, though, make sense only to etymologists and philologists, and dog the rest of us for life.
Case in point: I have never been able to keep the “restrictive” vs. “non-restrictive” clause terminology straight. One is the “which” clause (not essential to the meaning of the sentence, thus needing commas to set it off), and one is the “that” clause (essential to sentence meaning, thus needing no commas); but as much I’ve tried, I’ve never been able to make any logical connection between these clauses and restriction. What is restricting what? In practice I can write the clauses correctly, but as a teacher I am often called upon to explain underlying grammar rules, and it’s embarrassing not to know. So, I danced the halls of my university (in my mind, at least) when I cracked open the new grammar style book our department adopted this year and found that the words “restrictive” and “non-restrictive” were not even in the index. The terms had been replaced with the descriptors I’d always been using for those clauses: essential and non-essential.
I tell this story to my students now whenever I see that old shame begin to rise up into their cheeks—that grammar guilt we all carry around like original sin. I tell them that our language is still changing, that the terms applied are arbitrary, and that nobody gets grammar right all the time. PhDs make errors in pronoun case and agreement regularly at faculty meetings, I assure them. This is because the evolution of our language has left us with a lot of rules that just aren’t logical. Which brings me to it’s vs its, a common error in all my College Composition classes.
Why do students have such a hard time with these teeny words? Well, it might be because the grammar rules that students know intuitively conflict with what we tell them to do with these words. Take this sentence, for instance:
Look at the peacock—it’s preening its shiny feathers.
Writers of English know to use an apostrophe for contractions and possession, so…hm, we have both in this sentence, but we only use an apostrophe for the contraction. While those philologists and etymologists have lively debates over the reason for this anomaly, we teachers are stuck with explaining the problem away as an exception for “possessive pronouns,” a term that young students are probably not ready for and older students have long forgotten. So, what do you do?
Literally, what do you do? How do you teach it’s vs its to young writers in your lives? Please feel free to share your ideas in the comments!
Personally, I’m thinking of getting a cheery-looking rubber stamp made that says something like: It’s only ever means it is. It may not solve the problem, but it might be satisfying to slap that into the margin instead of scribbling the sameCommon Core English Language Standards connections:
L.1.1d. Use personal, possessive, and indefinite pronouns….L.2.2c. Use an apostrophe to form contractions and frequently occurring possessives.L.3.1a. Explain function of nouns, pronouns…and their functions in particular sentences.L.4.1g. Correctly use frequently confused words….
www.janeharrington.com

STUDENTS TEACH POETRY

by Mary Quattlebaum
April may be the cruelest month, according to the great American poet T.S. Eliot, but it can also be the silliest, saddest, funniest, most profound and amazingly playful month, thanks to National Poetry Month.
People learn a lot by teaching so this Pencil Tip gives students (no matter their age) the chance to share a poem with others (and in the process, to learn more about it and poetry in general).
1.  Tell students that each day in April will begin with a poem and that each student will have a chance to share and talk about a favorite poem.  Assign days.
2.   Ask students to look over poetry books and to write down the titles of 3 poems they like by 3 different poets (this will prevent them from choosing the first poem they come to and give them a chance to compare different poems and become more familiar with different poets).
3.  Take them to the school library and let them choose poetry books, develop a poetry table or nook in the classroom, encourage them to search for poems at home.

4.  In addition to choosing/sharing a favorite poem, students should write down (1) why they chose this poem, (2) what they notice about its form/shape, rhymes, or sounds, (3) what words seem especially interesting or vivid, (4) what feeling the poem gives them, and (5) the author and (optional) the year it may have been written or published.
5.  On the first day of April, model the process by reading aloud your favorite poem, talking abThe sharing each day only takes about 5 minutes, but students will attend carefully to what their peers have chosen and why.  This 5-minute daily poem/share will open them up to language and its possibilities in new ways.
Helpful Poetry Resources:  The Poetry Friday Anthology (both the K-5 and 6-8 editions), compiled by Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong; The 20th Century Children’s Poetry Anthology, selected by Jack Prelutsky; Hallowilloween by Calef Brown; Falling Down the Page: A Book of List Poems by Georgia Heard; Pumpkin Butterfly by Heidi Mordhorst; Red Sings from Treetops by Joyce Sidman; and Forest Has a Song by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater.
 www.maryquattlebaum.com

MAKE A SPLASH:OCEAN RESEARCH AND WRITING FUN

guest post by Alison Formento
When I write for magazines or newspapers I must fact check all information I include in an article or essay. I conduct interviews and research whatever topic I’m writing about and it’s no different when I write my nature picture books. My books are considered literary non-fiction. There are fictional elements in my stories in which the trees, bees, or seas talk, but every fact shared has been thoroughly researched and verified by scientists and experts, such as apiarists (beekeepers) for my book These Bees Count! and oceanographers for These Seas Count!
My new picture book These Seas Count! was an exciting book to research since our world’s oceans and seas are fascinating and a vital part of keeping our Earth healthy. Scientists have guessed that there are perhaps a million yet-to-be discovered marine life forms. A million! We know so many amazing sea facts such as there are phytoplankton too small to see which help make our air breathable and there are whales the length of several school buses who can communicate in their own language, but imagine what else we don't know yet about marine life. Our oceans and seas are a place of mystery and wonder and we must care for them as we would a garden in our own backyard.
In my research, I discovered underwater coral called Sea Fan and used that as the name for the boat in These Seas Count! Here’s a way students can use research to make a splash in their own writing.1. Students draw an ocean, beach, and sky scene. Drawing a scene can help inspire creative thinking, especially for those students who may have a hard time getting started on a writing project.2. Free-write names of sea life that make the beach or ocean its home. Example, write “Whale” in the water part of the picture or “Gull” in the sky part of the picture. The goal is to fill the page with as many of these words as possible to use in drafting an essay.3. Research books, magazines, educational websites, and ocean links to find a sea creature that you’ve never heard of before, such as the new Zombie Worm recently discovered in the Antarctic Ocean. There are links to several wonderful educational ocean websites on the Educator’s Guide for These Seas Count! (found on my website) including this one: http://oceana.org/en/explore/marine-wildlife.4. List at least five facts on one new sea creature. Include this new creature on drawing.5. Use ocean drawing to inspire writing. How does that new creature, like the Sea Fan or Zombie Worm interact with other creatures on the ocean drawing?6. Write about this creature using the five facts discovered through research. Share information as if writing for someone who has never been to the ocean. 7. Make a splash using personal knowledge of the ocean, along with newly discovered facts, to draft an essay that is both interesting and fun to research, to write, and to read.
Alison Formento is the author of This Tree Counts!, This Tree, 1, 2, 3, These Bees Count!, and These Seas Count! For more about Alison visit her website: www.alisonashleyformento.com