How to Draw Polar Animals- Writing Center

I am very excited to share a fun writing center that I have come up with. My students have been transitioning from narrative to explanatory/informative writing and I wanted to continue this during my centers time. Writing centers have traditionally been very open to student choice of topic in my classroom. For this new center, I wanted to provide my students with enough support to be able to write an explanatory piece independently.

To keep the students engaged and hook them into this style of writing, I decided to use the wintery theme of polar animals as a subject for the center. Each week I introduce a new polar animal and provide my students with a word bank and basic facts about the animal. The students then have some information to use when creating their own sentences. These resources are displayed for them at the writing center.

The students learn how to draw the animal using the steps on the page. They practice following the illustrated steps, and read the sentences to help them with their drawing.

Then the students write about the animal using the resources and knowledge they have gained. We talk a lot about not copying from the fact page, and instead using the word bank to help create sentences of their own. The writing center has been so engaging and my students have created quality informational writing using it. You can get it here!

Here are some examples from the writing center:

I have some fun art projects to implement once the students learn about the various polar animals. Check out our cute walrus project!

Check out the Arctic Fox and Antarctic Penguin  art projects!

Happy Teaching!!