Grade 1 Book Project

Grade 1 has just finished a very creative project where they wrote and illustrated their own book. This began one day when we were acting out a story we had read in class. Their imaginations took hold and the idea for their own story “An elephant and a Mouse” was born.

The children learnt a great deal by putting this book together. A lot of discussion and planning was involved. They had to be careful about presenting their work neatly so that others could read it and thus had to conform to the conventions of capitalization and punctuation. They became very comfortable with words such as: illustrator, narrator, title and cover page.

Not only did they develop their writing skills but also their artwork. They even had to draw upon their mathematical skills when organizing the layout of the pages.

Our First Graders have a clearer understanding of how a book is put together with the addition of extra pages at the beginning and the end of the book with further illustrations.

Note how their work is acknowledged by the inclusion of copyright titles at the beginning of the book and pages added to the story with which tell another tale… The last page sees the zoo keeper running after the elephant and the mouse!

The final stages of the book project were helped greatly by our Art teacher, Mr. Dimitris Michalaros, who gave the children a wonderful lesson on how to mount their work in an attractive way. He allowed the children to give rein to their imaginations in designing their own clouds on which they pasted a page of the book and then illustrated the clouds in any way they wanted.

Each child was then given a magic pencil by our Art teacher which should only be used when doing very special artwork! The work is displayed on the main noticeboard opposite the secretary’s desk. We hope you enjoy your children’s efforts.

Ms. Marianne Dundon