The Picture Book That Became My Favorite First Week of School

Every August, I face the same tug-of-war. I want the first week of school to be all about getting to know my new class, but I also don't want to lose a full week of real reading instruction to icebreakers and name games. This year, I found a book that will let me do both at once and as I plan it, it's becoming one of my favorite things I've ever built for Room 6.

The book is Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing, written by Kay Haring (Keith's own sister) and illustrated by Robert Neubecker. If you don't know Keith Haring's art, you've almost certainly seen it with its bold outlines, bright colors, and dancing figures. But the story behind it is what makes this book perfect for week one.

Throughout the book, adults keep asking young Keith the same question: "Why?" Why is he doodling on his school papers? Why would he give a piece of art away for free? Every single time, Keith just shrugs and the same line in the book repeats: he just kept drawing.

That repeated refrain is the whole reason this book works so well for the start of the year. It's a story about doing something you love even when people question you, and it's a story about believing your voice (or in his case, your art) deserves to be shared with the world. Both of those ideas are exactly what I want my students thinking about as we start a brand-new year together.

Part One: An Introduction Nonfiction Quick Dip

I don't want to just read this book and move on. I want my class to actually dig into it as a piece of nonfiction. So I created one of my usual Nonfiction Quick Dip routines for this book.  An NQD as I refer to them is class is simple: one book, one week, five days, five different reading standards.  I did these all last year (you can read more in depth about them here.) I want to start the year with a typical routine, but back to school focused, and this book is going to be perfect.  This will be our first official Quick Dip of the year.

On Monday, we read the whole book together and talk about the main idea. As I am reading, we are discussing the book, the message, the narrative nonfiction.  I am also charting ideas the kids are giving me, focusing them in on the standard of main idea.  From there, the rest of the week I let the book's own structure do a lot of the teaching for me.  That repeated refrain is about as clean an example of text structure as a picture book can offer, and the fact that the book is written by Keith's own sister opened up a great conversation about firsthand versus secondhand accounts that not all books lend themselves to.  Each day, I use one standard, read a focused part of the book, and chart.  By the end of the first week, we have a whole record of our nonfiction, standards-based discussion.

Part Two: Turning It Into a Back-to-School Project

Here's the part I'm most excited about. Once the Quick Dip is done, I want my class to actually use what we'd just noticed about Keith Haring's story and turn it into something of their own.

The writing piece.  Since by this point we will have already talked about the book's repeated refrain during the Quick Dip, I will ask my class: what if we had our own refrain?  Brainstorming a whole list together on the board ( "...and I just kept trying," "...and I just kept being myself," "...and I just kept believing in myself"), it is my hope that they will choose refrains that speak to them and then write 6 sentences about themselves that go along with that refrain.   For example, if they choose, "I just keep being myself", they could write sentences like, "I love to spend time trying to make my sister laugh as I try out my corny jokes and I just keep being myself."

Because the poem's structure was already built (and because we built the refrain bank together as a class first), this should be an assignment that is accessible to all of my students at the beginning of the year.   

The art project. Using the same bold, flat, outlined style we'd just spent a whole lesson studying in the illustrations, each student will draw a simple figure of themselves.  There was no fine detail, just thick outlines and bright color, the way Keith Haring drew his own dancing figures. I found this great directed drawing example from Deep Space Sparkle that I downloaded to give the kids.  Around the figure, they will then add a few radiating lines, like his famous "Radiant Baby" symbol.  Using the ideas presented in the 6 sentences they wrote earlier, they will draw 6 very simple, no detail symbols to represent those sentence ideas.  This art then becomes and "all about me" project!

You can have them do this on paper, but I have a HUGE set of windows in my room that I love to use as classroom display.  So I am going to turn this into a "window cling" project.  The kids will trace their initial drawing from the paper to a clear piece of clear contact paper.  Using sharpies, they will color it.  The more color they use, the better it looks hanging on the window.  Because of the size of my windows, I am going to give them a piece of clear contact paper that is 8 inches by 8 inches.  Then, around the window cling, on black paper as a border, they will write their 6 sentences they brainstormed earlier.  

By the end of the week, I will have a window display full of tiny, bold, Keith-Haring-style self-portraits, each one with a few lines of a student's own writing surrounding it like a frame. This is exactly what I love to do on week one of school.  I will learn real things about my new students, they will practice real reading standards, and we will end with something we made together, right when we needed to start feeling like a class.

If you try this with your own class, I'd love to hear how it goes and what refrain your students land on for their own year.

If you would like to do this in your classroom, you can download the Keith Haring Nonfiction Quick Dip (Grades 3-5) discussion questions and chart standards cards here for FREE!