Three Letter Clusters: What Do Illustrators Do? Written and Illustrated By: Eileen Christelow Genre: Informational Text – gives you facts about a topic. Skills: Text and Graphic Features – Authors use text features, such as headings, and graphic features, such as drawings, to help them organize and explain their ideas. Sequence of Events – The order in which things happen in a story. Analyze/Evaluate – When you analyze something, you think about information in greater detail. When you evaluate, you judge. Verb Tenses – Present tense verbs have an –s ending with singular subjects and no special ending with plural subjects. Most past tense verbs have an –ed ending. Spelling Three Letter Clusters: three thrill string strong straight scrap scream scrape scratch scramble street strange spray think stretch spring throw threw they sprout Lesson Vocabulary: imagine – to see a picture in your mind (Some artists paint real things. Other artists paint things that they imagine.) tools – things people use to help them do a job (Artists use tools such as brushes, pencils, and markers to make art.) illustrate – to make pictures that show or explain something (This artist has started to illustrate, or draw, pictures for a storybook.) scribbles – drawings or doodles, drawn in a quick or careless way (Most children make messy scribbles before they learn to draw well.) sketches – quick drawings without much detail (Painters often make sketches, or rough drawings, before they begin to paint.) tracing – used to copy or trace lines (Using see-through tracing paper lets you make an exact copy of something.) research – careful study of a subject or problem (Sometimes artists need to do research to find out what things look like.) textures – the ways that surfaces look and feel (Paper can have different textures. It can look and feel smooth or rough.)