Suggested Audience: Can be adapted for Grades 3-8.

Participants: Up to 4 sites connected.

Program Goal: To have students "see" with an artist's eyes, report with a journalist's technique and interactively engage in the writing process with the guidance of a professional author.

Preparation for Program: Author, Carolyn Lesser, meets with teachers over interactive TV prior to the scheduled videoconference with students to discuss the goals of the program. The author and the teachers will discuss the program plan, including activities to prepare students for the videoconference. Preparation includes: 1. Exploring one of Lesser's books, The Goodnight Circle, Great Crystal Bear, and/or Storm on the Desert, and discussing the facts contained in the books. 2. Students select an inanimate object in nature (from outdoors). 3. Students draw their selected object on one half of a side of a piece of paper. 4. Students bring their pictures, along with a magnifying glass, to the videoconference.

Program Description: Carolyn Lesser will introduce herself and her books, and explain her method of exploring in order to write. She will invite each class to go on an imaginary expedition with her to parts unknown. She will encourage the students to observe scientifically what they see, hear, taste, touch, and smell on their journey of exploration, and more importantly, to make notes about their impressions along the way. She will show them how to keep a journal of these impressions, and then have them use their magnifying glasses to truly "look" at the objects they have drawn from nature. The students will be asked to draw their objects again, this time with the keen eye of scientific/artistic observation. Finally, the students will be asked to use their new drawing to create a piece of prose (nonfiction) to share with the author during the next videoconference meeting. The author will use her own writing as examples as she takes the students on their own journeys of discovery.

Follow Up Activities: Students and teachers will return to their classrooms to brainstorm and write their nonfiction pieces using journalistic strategies for writing but adding narrative elements that make the prose interesting. After revising their work, students will choose which parts to read to the author in order to get her feedback about their writing. Students will prepare several general questions for the author to be asked during the next videoconference.

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