So, on the first day back from winter break- the entire 8th grade class was divided up into 3 different classrooms for The Big Day of Reading. This day is designate for activities that promote reading campus wide. The 6th grade students engage in all sorts of reading activities from poetry art, read-alongs, library talks, and reading games. 7th grade students get more technical with creating book trailers, competing in reading challenges, and creating reading posts. The 8th grade class shifts from reading to becoming reading advocates. Their role on The big Day of Reading is to paint 27 original book cover ceiling tiles to advertise books to new readers and this year they did not disappoint!
To start off I have to give props to three collaborators. Cary Zierenberg-Senge, our amazing ELA Teacher, for encouraging me to steer students towards survival-themed book titles that the 8th grade were currently reading in their Lit Circles. The relevancy of this idea was the first hook. The second hook resulted from the efforts of our extremely dedicated and talented librarian, Elsa Prettol. Elsa created a lesson to inspire original book cover designs which included anecdotes from Chip Kidd's Ted Talk, key elements of book cover designs, and ethical practices of designing an eye catching book cover that can appeal to all. The third collaborator is Joanna Mattsson-Boze who is an extremely artistic person that happens to be our Math Teacher! Since the murals were a scale project, her involvement in the process helped to calibrated student learning and also connected all three subjects together: Art, ELA and Math. I LOVE my Colleagues!
I linked all the projects here and posted some of my faves below. I am SO VERY proud of every student and their efforts! YAY Team!
