Last week, my students handed in their term projects. They created their own stories about a butterfly’s life through each stage of development. Beautiful books were surrounding me as they all clamored for me to read theirs. I was really touched to see the effort and care that went in to creating these works of art. The instructions were simple.  I wanted them to start off with a store bought construction paper book which is just colored construction paper that’s already binded for you. Some replaced the generic cover with one of their own, others simply ripped of the generic cover and made the first page into the cover by just decorating it. The rules about content were strict: they had to portray they character at each stage of the life cycle and this had to be in the correct order – egg, caterpillar/larva, chrysalis/pupa, butterfly/adult. I loved them, I let them read their books to the class one at a time and while the stories were similar they were still unique in style and some even had hints of an impending sequel! lol. 

I felt very pleased at my choice of assignment for them because my students really felt like they got the experience of being an author or illustrator. And this should make them see more of their real potential.