"When You're Finished..." 3rd-6th Grades

As I mentioned in a previous post, I like to have consistent activities to engage students when they are finished early with their work. For Kindergarten though 2nd graders, I have "Options" centers. The older kids require a little more to keep them engaged, so I have them make "sketchbooks" at the beginning of the year.

I am saying "sketchbooks" in quotation marks, because I am not having the students use them in the traditional artist sketchbook way. (I know, I know, I should be calling them something else... maybe next year!)  Sketchbooks in my classroom are a simple book consisting of a 12x18 piece of white paper folded in half, my ARTIST page, a Table of Contents, and ten blank pieces of copy paper... all stapled together.

I introduce sketchbooks at the beginning of the year, and I have a different lesson for each grade level to complete as the cover. Here are some examples of actual student covers:

The first page of the sketchbook is what I call the ARTIST page. It is an acrostic of my criteria for making a succesful creative drawing. After a student completes a drawing, he or she checks it against the ARTIST page. If they meet all the criteria, I will sign off in the Table of Contents' approval column and will enter them in the contest to have that drawing shown on the morning announcements. I pick about 5-10 of those drawings every quarter, and they are featured in a slide show prior to the morning announcements.

Here is the ARTIST page (a student's half-colored-in version):

The Table of Contents contains 10 creative ideas that I have for them that relate to each grade level's "big idea".  It also has 10 blank spaces for students to write their own ideas.

And like I said, the rest of the pages in the sketchbook are just blank, and I expect kids to use the front and back of both. I use copy paper since it is easier to staple through.

BTW... this is how I store mine (big homemade class folders within each drawer):