One of the big books we have been exploring is Step Inside the Rain Forest by Meish Goldish. After we had read the story several times together, we started looking closely at the illustrations by Susan T. Hall. The students were very interested in all the different animals found in the rain forest.
Take a look at what happened when I left the big book, some pencils and sticky notes on the back table...
It was amazing to sit back and watch the collaboration, cooperation and teamwork that was displayed. The students worked together identifying and labeling not only the animals from the story, but also the plants and trees. In the above picture, you can see that one of the students labelled the "canopy" of the rain forest as well.
The students worked long and hard on this activity - at some points, there were 11 students working on the book together at the same time. Take a look at all the things they found and labeled...
The next day, the students returned to the big book and realized there were some animals in the book that they couldn't identify. In true problem solving form, they decided to look in the other books we had collected from the library to see if they could find the names of the animals...and they did!!
It was truly magical to see all the students working together in this student-driven, authentic, meaningful activity!
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