Harris High School year 7 book project
This was an exciting project to encourage students to think laterally, to challenge conventions and preconceived ideas of what images represent and what a book is, to be experimental with different media and to allow the unexpected to inform possible outcomes, to enthuse students to produce creative writing -develop creative writing and speaking skills- verbally telling story to the group.
It also gave them experience of many transferable skills including: team working, negotiation, decision making, compromise, thinking creatively, taking risks, researching and working to deadlines.
Students only had 3 double lessons to create their books so time was against them, but they all rose to the challenge and created some amazing work. The first lesson got them playing with words, sentences, story ideas as well as introduced them to the world of artists books, they had to work in teams to come up with the story idea and content for their book and work out the best method/book type to create. The room was buzzing while they studied my book examples and researched other artists book forms online and from published books. They were very excited about this project.
This project gave them the freedom they rarely get to come up with ideas, experiment and have a go. Some chose to act out their story and film it, their book held their DVD, a synopsis of the story and information on the actors, one group made a giant envelope which folded out into a theatre booth from which they could tell their story with props attached to the inside walls and one (group of boys) stitched together scraps of fabric for their cover and used a sewing machine for the first time this book then became a book inside a book. It was great to see the incredibly imaginative ideas being developed with such enthusiasm.
We also set up a blog where the students could share their ideas and feedback on the project.