ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is young children’s own illustrated science books that they composed as part of the two integrated science-literacy units, Matter and Forest, in the six ISLE classrooms. These books represented a culminating activity (a summative assessment), where children chose their own topic to write and draw about (see Chapter 1 for details), and teachers did not explicitly scaffold children about the content, text, or pictures of their books. The children’s information literature books that had been read during the unit were available, but students could not take them to their desk for reference while composing their own books. Moreover, the children were told:
Write about a part of what we have studied in the unit—something that other 1st (or 2nd or 3rd) graders, who haven’t studied this unit, would like to read.
Your book should include both writing and drawing. That is, your book should be like the books we read that have print and pictures.
You can look at our semantic map, your journals, and other things we created during the unit, but this book should be your own book on a topic that you are interested in, not something that that you have copied from books.
You won’t be able to write/draw about everything we studied, so you will decide what to include. In making your book, you should think about what ideas you want to explain in writing and what ideas you want to explain in pictures.
