Beauty Is In the Eye of the Beholder

Background Information:

I teach third grade ABL students in an Abbot school district. My ABL students are still in the process of acquiring English. All of them qualify for free lunch. It has been my observation, that as a result of limited resources and opportunities, my students have a small pool of schema or knowledge in which to draw upon when reading various fiction and non-fiction texts and when writing their own original stories. This of course, can be an impediment to their academic progress. I love teaching the writing process and I try to help my students develop a passion for reading and writing. I find that when my students truly love reading and writing they excel at it. I try to stress to my students over and over again that writer's look at the world differently, that they see things around them that others don't, this is what I call the "writer's eye." The culminating activity of this project will be the creation of a class book titled-Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder.

Objective: Students Will Be Able To:

Develop a "writer's eye"; broaden their schema; identify and use similes; write a narrative/descriptive composition; develop and use imagery when writing; increase reading fluency and vocabulary; discover the people in their community and their roles in the community; explore and identify different landmarks in their community; follow the steps of a process; create a book and develop the use of a digital camera.

Instructional Event:

1. First students will brainstorm ideas about beauty by completing a semantic web.
2. Students will participate in a shared reading of the book titled- "Miss Rumphius". This book is part of the Union City Third Grade, Marking Period Three, Language Arts Curriculum. The story tells the tale of a woman who travels the world to experience the beauty inherent in it. As a child, Miss Rumphius' grandfather used to tell her that one of the goals of her life should be to leave the world a more beautiful place. Miss Rumphius decides to leave the world more beautiful by planting seeds of flowers all along the countryside and roads where she lives.
3. As part of whole group instruction, students will be taught what a simile is. Students will create their own examples of similes while working in small cooperative groups.
3. At this point, I will instruct students in how to use their cameras. Over the course of a week or two, students will take pictures of something or someone they consider to be beautiful. Later, they will choose three of their favorite photographs to be compiled into the class book.
4. After the photos are stored and printed, students will be given a descriptive graphic organizer, to organize their ideas about why the subject of their photo is beautiful. Students will be encouraged to use one simile to describe each photo.
5. Students will peer edit their captions. I will also edit the captions.
6. The pictures and descriptive captions will then be assembled into a class book titled-Beauty Is In the Eye of the Beholder.
7. Students place each of their photos onto three separate pages. They will decide how each photo and caption is to be placed on each page. Students will also use clip art (where appropriate) and any other art materials to decorate the page of their photos and captions.
8. I will assemble the book using a spiral binding machine.