Leaf Art Animals

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• Show the class a few examples of leaf animals and come up with backstories for them as a class.
• Model using language that shows the setting, the characters, and the problem and solution in the story. In your description, share your thoughts, feelings, and ideas about the leaf animal in the story.

Guided Practice

• Have students brainstorm ideas for a possible leaf animal in partnerships. Tell them to take turns orally describing their animal in its environment. Ask them to share their ideas, thoughts, and feelings about their animal.
• Have students choose a few leaves and hand out paper and glue.
• Students may work with partners while creating animals to share thoughts and ideas with one another about the animal.
• Tell students to lay out the design before gluing. Once they have an animal, they may glue it down and draw its environment in the background using crayons.
• Instruct students to share their animal with another partnership. Provide the following sentence starters for assistance with the presentation of their visual display:
  • "My animal has..."
  • "This animal lives..."
  • "I think my animal..."
  • "I like my animal because..."

Independent working time

• Once their animal is ready, students can pick up the writing paper and start describing their animal in writing.
• Ask them to write details about the animal they created. Encourage them to use some of the sentence straters from their partnership presentation.
• Remind students that the visual display should clarify their ideas about the animal and that the written description and visual display should work together to show their thoughts and feelings about the animal they created.