In Pictures and In Words Book Study

This summer, I decided to join my fellow bloggers and do a book study. After reading what the book was about, I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to improve on how I teach writing and what I could do to make writing look different in my classroom. Mrs. Wills Kindergarten is kicking off this book study so I hope you can join us and to be able to share your ideas.


Here is my reflection from the first 6 chapters using the guided questions that have been given.

How might you explain to students that illustrating is composing?
Pictures provide so much information and can tell all readers what is going on in a picture or story. Pictures are also a guide to what might be happening next. I would share with my students that doing a 'picture sketch' would help them get their creative minds flowing and being able to create ideas with pictures in mind. Sometimes illustrations can be more of a idea creator then trying to come up with words.

How might your attitude towards writing affect your students' willingness to writing?
My attitude affects everything I teach. If I don't show excitement in my teaching then how do I expect my students to be excited to learn. I like to teach Kindergarteners to write but there are times when I get a in rut and feel like I'm running out of techniques to meet all my learners without it being the same ol' thing. Focusing on a different concept of writing has me already excited to what writing will look like that I'm hoping my students will also be excited to see writing in a different light.

How might you help students build stamina in their writing?
I use Daily 5 in my classroom, so I am very familiar with building students stamina. To build students stamina in writing, I would approach in the same manner I would do when we introduce Work on Writing. It would look a little different as to what time of day I would have for writing and also they would have blank made up books to work with instead of the notebooks they use for Daily 5. Students would also be familiar with the vocabulary and will have a good sense of what stamina is and be able to make those connections.

What language might you use with your students to talk about reading like a writer, bother as a writer of words and pictures?
When I talk about writing to my students, I already use the terms authors and illustrators and explain to them that they need to be good illustrators and authors. One way I would change this would be to say "now we talked about Eric Carle and how he does wonderful illustrations. I would like to see you do your best illustrations just like Eric Carle did in the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar." I would make more references to certain authors after we have talked about them by looking at their illustrations. I would also use the writing terms of planning and revision for my students to understand the vocabulary that will become familiar to them as they grow older.

Name several books (not perviously mentioned in this text) you would gather for your classroom's units of student on illustration.
I wish I was able to be in my classroom library right now so I could make a stack and be able to look through some books. Here are a few that I'm thinking off the top of my head.
Eric Carle books
The Crayon Box That Talked
Jan Brett books
If You Give A... series of books
Tops and Bottoms
*I know it's not the best list, but my mind is drawing a blank to some that I'm going to kick myself for not remembering.

Next on the agenda is Chapter 7, Ideas and Content. Can't wait to see what I can learn and read others thoughts.