We’ve been working on writing for a purpose and after reading Zinna’s Flower Garden we wrote in the same style as Monica Wellington and created informational posters about our tadpoles.

In this book, Monica Wellington places the text in the center of the page and then surrounds it with information about tools, seeds, plant parts, weather, etc.

So we created our writing to reflect that. These pages are samples that are about 1/2 way completed. The children put text or an illustration with labels in the middle and then added tools, objects, materials, other animals they would see or need in the context of their text.

This sample is all about catfish and is surrounded by items you would need to keep a catfish in an aquarium.

This sample is about tadpoles living in a pond, so you can see other critters you might see in or around the pond.

The last sample is about keeping tadpoles in our classroom.  The image in the middle shows where we keep the tadpoles and around the outside, you can see the beginnings of the tadpole life cycle.

This was a fun way to incorporate what we were reading and what a real author had done into our writing.