My students need a storage unit and clay, origami paper, tape and other bookmaking, drawing, and lunchtime art supplies to encourage creativity in our Library Learning Commons.
My students come from all neighborhoods in our diverse city. We are a large comprehensive Title I middle school. My students speak Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog, Samoan, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Urdu and Arabic. They are eager to learn, create, design and be part of a learning lab we call middle school! The library is being transformed into a Learning Commons, and our student lunch period is a wild time for exploration at the maker space tables. I have hundreds of students vying to get into the library during lunch because they can do things with their minds, hearts and hands. It is a vibrant, cooperative, and dynamic space that we cherish.
My Project
Special paper, glue, waxed thread, bone-folders and self healing mats all are part of the bookmaking frenzy we get into in our school library both during lunch maker time and during collaborations with writing teachers at our middle school. Bookmaking helps students become authors, illustrators and collaborating partners with other students on their books. They learn that synthesizing writing and drawing is meaningful and fun! They also learn to like the positive attention it brings them as well!
Handmade books by middle school students are special.
They are honest, funny, heartbreaking and silly. Bookmaking allows student to learn many things like how to interview an elder family member, tell a family story and illustrate it. They learn how to illustrate and write to explain how to do something. They create super heroes by writing, illustrating, and collaborating on a graphic novel or a zine. Students are contributing their ideas and imagination to the world which has become part of our library learning commons lessons and lunchtime maker space activities.
We went from 30 students making books the previous year to 250 students making books this year. We won 1st, 2nd, 3rd place in bookmaking contest this year. Students are truly finding their voice when they get the chance to play with words and art in a creative way by designing their book and deciding the style, binding, cover, back, paper, and so much more. The sensitive creativity flows out of my students when they have options to make their own stories come alive with their drawings, paintings, prints, collage and adornments.
Some of the art supplies will be for our lunchtime maker tables so students can teach each other origami paper folding techniques in the origami club or the jewelry making table with polymer clay or journal making with the Nepalese paper for journal making.
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