What could be more compelling to a 4th grader than to be given a small pocket notebook by their teacher to record observations about the world around them? Our students were quite excited to receive them and put them to use. We asked them to pause for a moment in their busy lives to stop and look around. We have had extraordinary weather of late and took the opportunity to travel around our campus to sit and observe the world happening around us. We asked what happens when you look at the same thing for five minutes? What details do you see that you missed with a glance? We found ourselves down by the creek looking at water striders and listening to the gurgle of the water. 
Another time we lazed around on blankets on the quadrangle and looked up at the sky examining clouds and swaying tree branches and the errant monarch. The students are paying attention to detail and recording it all in their notebooks. This exercise is built into our creative writing program to help students grow and enhance their descriptive writing abilities. We will be introducing simile and metaphor and other forms of figurative language over the next few months but one must be able to write what they see before they learn to compare it. By the end of the year, their notebooks will be filled with wonderful details that will support them in their fiction writing unit.
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