Two Page Informational Spread

Now that's a post title!  We've been learning a lot about informational text and how these books are set up. Students have been learning about diagrams captions, maps, and other ways to display information.

We've been learning about turkeys this week.  GOBBLE, GOBBLE!  I thought this would be the perfect time to have kids display the information they learned in a two page spread.  Here's the book I use.

We talked about borders and how they could be effective in sharing information.  Working with a partner, they created a border.  They came up with great ideas.  Some drew turkey prints, while others drew eggs, or turkeys.  Once they created their borders we looked at the book again and how Jim Arnosky displayed the information in his book.

Let me just say having a color printer at school is A-MAZING!  I didn't want the kids stressed out over making the illustrations so I printed some of his illustrations in color and found some images online.

Students did have to include one diagram in their informational spread.  I had one student tell me turkeys were hard to draw.  Of course I agreed and he quickly came up with a solution.  The hand turkey...now who doesn't remember making those in school?

Each group picked four pictures and worked as a team on how they wanted to lay out the pictures.

The solution...the famous hand turkey!

I then met with each group to go over what information they planned on sharing.  Let me tell you, they learned A LOT about turkeys!!  I also helped them by making the lines on their spread to keep their writing organized and together.

I think for our first time doing this they came out really well!!