Beyond Scribble: Teach Your Students to Draw
Beyond Scribble:
Teach Your Students to Draw
80 Directed Drawing Lessons for K-1
Easy and fun to give
Repeatable
Set up as a center
Self-explanatory and self-correcting
NO PREP – Print and GO!
Easy and fun to give
Repeatable
Set up as a center
Self-correcting
NO PREP
Print and GO!
Testimonials
Super engaging, well planned lesson resources that my students loved.
Jaime G.
Students STRUGGLE with illustrating their work and feel very defeated – these are a BIG help!
These are super cute and easy to have success with for younger learners. I work online as a school occupational therapist and have a ton of drawing resources. These are the best by far for those just learning as simple shapes are used to create successful and cute pictures. I am very happy with this resource.
Kids loved this…very engaging!
Here are some lessons…
and a few helpful tips
CONNECT the Cute Animal with a story, a theme, a process, or other curricular content.
USE whole group, small group, or at an independent learning center.
TEACH a few Directed Drawing Lessons to the whole group before students try new lessons independently.
DISPLAY the Directed Drawing Lesson for all to see. Optional: keep it out of view as you model.
MODEL drawing procedures step by step. Talk through the steps as you draw.
USE math language such as rectangle, direction, curve, angle, semi-circle, above, below etc… as you model drawing.
SET EXPECTATIONS for quality student work. Show student work from a previous lesson.
CIRCULATE around the room to monitor progress. Give individualized help as needed.
COMBINE with sight word sentences for high quality written work that will increase literacy.
CHOOSE a question to prompt a written response.
KEEP a folder of previous lessons at the Art Center for students to choose from and try again.
MAINTAIN a selection of exemplary student work for other students to read, copy, and be inspired by.
CELEBRATE student work. Pause the class during tabletime to present some student work in progress. Use such pauses judiciously and infrequently.
All of the directions for these lessons are wordless, except for the animal name. They are purely graphic and easy to give to students who cannot yet read.
and a few helpful tips
MODEL drawing procedures step by step. Talk through the steps as you draw.
USE math language such as rectangle, direction, curve, angle, semi-circle, above, below etc… as you model drawing.
SET EXPECTATIONS for quality student work. Show student work from a previous lesson.
CIRCULATE around the room to monitor progress. Give individualized help as needed.
COMBINE with sight word sentences for high quality written work that will increase literacy.
CHOOSE a question to prompt a written response.
All of the directions for these lessons are wordless, except for the animal name. They are purely graphic and easy to give to students who cannot yet read.
Have a look at some student work
… from the 1st semester of kindergarten
They vary in accomplishment because kids are different.
nice, eh?
Student Work
1st Semester
Kindergarten
They vary in accomplishment because kids are different.
nice, eh?
I LOVE to Teach Art
I love the paint and the clay and the pastels. I love the various printed and textured papers we use to make collage. I love the compositional and expressive aspects of art made in the primary classroom. I love the stories my students tell with their art. I love to help my students through the difficulties they encounter. I love to look at their finished products. I try my best to fit collage, watercolors, pastels, and clay into an already jam-packed instructional schedule.
I LOVE to Teach Writing
I love art for its own sake. But the fact remains: the vast majority of art in the classroom is done with pencil and paper and crayon, as illustration, usually in combination with some form of writing.
The goal of all writing instruction is for students to produce strong meaningful written passages. In primary, this invloves training your students to come up with a strong initial idea or a strong initial sentence and then to follow it up with further sentences in elaboration.
In my classroom I use Directed Drawings with Sight Word Sentences to teach sight word recognition, as a precurser to creative writing.
You can read more about Sentence Starters, inventive spelling, creative writing, and written storytelling HERE.
Often I Teach Them Together
How I use Directed Drawings with Sight Word Sentences
I combine Directed Drawings with Sight Word Sentences both as a whole group lesson and as a stand-alone lesson at an independent learning center.
It is one way I give my students one of the most important foundational tools they need to begin to read and write: sight word recognition. Learning sight words as whole chunks primes students for the later skill of recognizing chunks in larger words to aid word reading – ing, er, all, tion etc…
This is somewhat separate from invented spelling and creative writing, though once students have entered the invented spelling stage Sight Word Sentences can be easily followed by sentences of your students’ own creation using invented spelling.
I use Directed Drawings in combination with Sight Word Sentences to give my students sight word practice. Sight word practice with drawing. Fun practice, yes, purposeful practice, yes, but essentially it’s just practice and practice and more practice in recognizing sight words. Practice and more practice. And without the tedium of worksheets.
We are trying to teach our students the foundations of reading and writing. This requires giving students plenty of exposure to sight words. Again and again and again. In reading and in writing. It also requires the teaching of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) decoding strategies. For more on how to teach CVC words look HERE.
This is about getting your students pleasantly engaged in learning what they need to know before they can begin to read and write. This is about giving your students adequate exposure to sight words, in reading and in writing.
Directed Drawings in combination with thoughtfully written combinations of Sight Word Sentences can help you do this.
But of course, Directed Drawing lessons can always be given as stand-alone art lessons. There are plenty of opportunities in these lessons alone to teach a variety of drawing techniques.
I LOVE to Teach Art
I love the paint and the clay and the pastels. I love the various printed and textured papers we use to make collage. I love the compositional and expressive aspects of art made in the primary classroom. I love the stories my students tell with their art. I love to help my students through the difficulties they encounter. I love to look at their finished products. I try my best to fit collage, watercolors, pastels, and clay into an already jam-packed instructional schedule.
I LOVE to Teach Writing
I love art for its own sake. But the fact remains: the vast majority of art in the classroom is done with pencil and paper and crayon, as illustration, usually in combination with some form of writing.
The goal of all writing instruction is for students to produce strong meaningful written passages. In primary, this invloves training your students to come up with a strong initial idea or a strong initial sentence and then to follow it up with further sentences in elaboration.
In my classroom I use Directed Drawings with Sight Word Sentences to teach sight word recognition, as a precurser to creative writing.
You can read more about Sentence Starters, inventive spelling, creative writing, and written storytelling HERE.
Often I Teach Them Together
I combine Directed Drawings with Sight Word Sentences both as a whole group lesson and as a stand-alone lesson at an independent learning center.
It is one way I give my students one of the most important foundational tools they need to begin to read and write: sight word recognition. Learning sight words as whole chunks primes students for the later skill of recognizing chunks in larger words to aid word reading – ing, er, all, tion etc…
This is somewhat separate from invented spelling and creative writing, though once students have entered the invented spelling stage Sight Word Sentences can be easily followed by sentences of your students’ own creation using invented spelling.
I use Directed Drawings in combination with Sight Word Sentences to give my students sight word practice. Sight word practice with drawing. Fun practice, yes, purposeful practice, yes, but essentially it’s just practice and practice and more practice in recognizing sight words. Practice and more practice. And without the tedium of worksheets.
We are trying to teach our students the foundations of reading and writing. This requires giving students plenty of exposure to sight words. Again and again and again. In reading and in writing. It also requires the teaching of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) decoding strategies. For more on how to teach CVC words look HERE.
This is about getting your students pleasantly engaged in learning what they need to know before they can begin to read and write. This is about giving your students adequate exposure to sight words, in reading and in writing.
Directed Drawings in combination with thoughtfully written combinations of Sight Word Sentences can help you do this.
But of course, Directed Drawing lessons can always be given as stand-alone art lessons. There are plenty of opportunities in these lessons alone to teach a variety of drawing techniques.
Try out a few.
Download some FREE lessons!
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Softback and printable PDF versions available
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BUY these books directly from Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers
BUY these books directly
from Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers
BUY these books directly from
Amazon and Teachers Pay Teachers
