An "Accordion" isn't just an instrument? It can be a BOOK style too?

Accordion Books and Storytelling!

Schools focus so much on reading and literacy these days that the most important, in my opinion (and I could be biased), part of the story are forgotten....  

The Pictures!!!

During African American History Month fourth grade students looked at the narrative within Jacob Lawrence's The Great Migration series.  We looked at how he documents and tells about an event using primarily pictures, not words.   Students then were challenged to think of a simple event in their life (my example was when I adopted my dog Dublin) and simplify it down to 5-7 sentences.  Students then took those 5-7 sentences and illustrated each one.  

 

 Now here comes the fun part!  At a recent professional development day the National Museum of Women in the Arts came and demonstrated the process of making an accordion book.  I immediately thought... PERFECT!... so I came back to work the following week, pumped to share this idea with my students, and well, they picked the concept up and ran with it!  Check out some of our phenomenal final results...

 

This student remembered the field trip we took to the Botanical Gardens LAST YEAR, where we drew from observation!!