Moon Journals: Writing, Art, and Inquiry Through Focused Nature Study » (1st Edition)

Joni Chancer began her teaching career in Melbourne, Australia, and is currently a fourth-grade teacher at Montecito Union School in Montecito, California. As a co-director of the South Coast Writing Project and Literature Institute for Teachers (University of California, Santa Barbara), she has helped teachers throughout the United States create studio/workshop environments for multimodal literacy in their classrooms.

Gina Rester-Zodrow has worked as a writer-in-residence at a K-6 elementary school in Thousand Oaks, California, since 1989. She facilitates workshops on integrated writing and art instruction for teachers, non-teaching adults, and children.

One of our greatest sources of wonder-the moon-becomes the focus of a classroom inquiry in this vivid illustration of integrated curriculum at its finest. Here, teachers Joni Chancer and Gina Rester-Zodrow recount how their students observed the moon's transit for twenty-eight days, recording their impressions in written and illustrated records called "Moon Journals."

As time goes by, we see these journals evolve from empirical observations into rich anthologies filled with prose, poetry, and artistic renderings using watercolors, pastels, printmaking materials, collage, and more. As the students experiment with multiple forms of composition, they begin to make sense of the world-and their place in it-in surprising ways.

Moon Journals contains some twenty-eight Writing Invitations and twenty-eight Art Invitations that are actually mini-lessons. Each is illustrated with samples from actual Moon Journals and each includes easy-to-follow, step-by step instructions for reproduction in the classroom. Also included are a full-color insert, samples of teachers' own journals, a bibliography, discussions on developing portfolios and the studio/workshop environment, and a chapter exploring the theoretical underpinnings of this approach to writing, art, and science investigation.

Moon Journals was written primarily for K-8 teachers, but it can also be used in high school and even at home. Above all, it is meant to serve as a model of fruitful inquiry in any subject area--in the realm of nature, or beyond.