Draw a Bear, Then Write About It

The four steps of a bear run down the left of this page, outline first with each step's new lines in orange, and the big paper for the drawing sits beside them. Under the paper are three ruled handwriting lines, each starting with printed words: My bear is, It can, It likes. The child draws the bear and then finishes the three sentences about the bear just drawn. Drawing comes first on this grade-2 page, which is what separates it from picture-writing pages where the picture is given.

Writing about a drawing the child has made gives the sentences a subject the child already cares about and knows every detail of. The starters fix the sentence shapes, a description, an ability and a liking, so the writing work is in the predicate: My bear is brown and big. It can climb a tree. It likes honey. Three sentences about one character is a small piece of narrative description.

Print it on plain paper; the drawing is not marked and the sentences are read, not scored. The fish page of the how-to-draw family asks for one word where this page asks for three sentences. The child draws the animal from its own steps; picture writing from a given picture, letter tracing and grid-copy pixels have pages of their own.