As I began my long-term substitute experience at a high school, my students had began practicing traditional calligraphy. Once they finished workbooks of different techniques in calligraphy, I knew I couldn’t let their calligraphy work go to waste. Again, aiming to develop independent thinking and problem solving for my students, I wanted to incorporate plenty of choice. Connecting art and literacy led me to book making.

Project Description:

Students were introduced to this unit first by brainstorming how many different types of books they could name. Answers ranged from cookbooks to instruction manuals and everything in between.

Once we finished our discussion about books, I introduced the unit as a transition from calligraphy with plenty of options. Students then spent the next 2 classes sketching ideas for different pages throughout their book. The requirements for their book were: 8-10 pages, at least one multi-page spread, windowing, blackout poetry, collage, a hardcover, and a traditional binding technique.

Students then had 4 classes to create their pages for their books. Once all pages had been created, we took 2 classes to introduce different bindings, print out binding patterns and bind our books. The binding part of this lesson was honestly the trickiest – leaving students with sore fingertips and me with a few broken book binding needles. Overall, though, students loved that they were able to complete a book from start to finish.