I read students “The Important Book,” By Margaret Wise Brown, which is a book for very young children. The grade 7’s were still super excited for “Story Time with Ms. Boley.” After reading the book, I had them create their own page of an important book about pastel techniques. The page had to use the same format as the original “The Important Book,” but be about the pastel technique of their choice. It also had to be easy to understand – so that a young child could try the technique and be successful. The point of this exercise was to get the kids thinking of how they take for granted that they know how to do these techniques. Can they explain them, can they break them down into the basics. Here is one of my favourite pages:

Here is a link to “The Important Book,” on slide share. A teacher has used it to teach paragraph format to her students.

http://www.slideshare.net/ruthdemshick/the-important-book-ppt