Terry Fox

I always struggle with what to do for Terry Fox to get kids engaged and also be educational. This is the visual journal page I did with my students this year.

Materials:

• watercolour paint
• paintbrushes
• Kosher salt
• paper
• crayons
• gluesticks
• markers
• fabric maple leaves 
• white glue, fabric glue or a glue gun

We had been learning about Terry Fox in class by reading books, watching videos and looking at pictures.  The goal of the visual journal page was to show what they had learned about Terry Fox over the past few weeks.

Open you visual journal to a single blank page.  Paint the page using watercolour paint.

While the paint is still wet sprinkle the page with Kosher salt.

Helpful Hint:

*Use lots of water when painting the page.  If the page is dry the salt will not absorb the extra liquid to create the desired effect.

While you wait for the visual journals to dry, grab a piece of blank white paper.  Have the kids take their shoes off and using an unwrapped crayon rub the crayon over top of the paper laid on the shoe.

Cut out the finished footprint.

Glue the footprint onto the visual journal page leaving room for the title.

Helpful Hint:

*I handed out the maple leaf ahead of time so students could play around with spacing before they made a final decision and glued on the footprint.

Add a title to the page.

Helpful Hint:

*as a class we brainstormed ideas for the title but student got to pick which one they liked best.  This is a good assessment to determine if they understand what a title is for in non-fiction texts

*titles should be big bold and exciting so that they are easy to find and give the viewers an idea of the topic

Next have students brainstorm together in pairs, small groups or as a class what they have learned about Terry Fox.

Once students are ready they can start to write their knowledge onto the footprint.

The final step is to glue the maple leaf onto the page.

Helpful Hint:

*I sometimes will use a glue gun to glue on the maple leaves for the kids.  This ensures it won't fall out of the journal later and need reglueing.