2016 Yearbook Covers

Our school district has a tradition of our 4th grade students designing the yearbook cover for the district's joint elementary yearbook that includes our four elementary schools.

All 4th grade students create a cover and then myself and the other elementary art teachers send them up to the middle school to be selected by the middle school art teachers. One gets chosen for the overall cover, four get chosen for the back cover, and a few others get chosen for the start of each school inside the yearbook.

It is a VERY long process that has to be done at the start of the year because covers need to be completed by the end of November. We tried to shorten the time this year but somehow it still look 2 months! 

The bottom left was selected for the back cover.

I started with my students exploring old yearbooks and mapping out why they think the covers got selected. Then they used the sheet below to practice skills and generate ideas/sketches. The themes we selected for them to work from were "Kindness Begins with Me","Dare to Dream", and "Anything But Ordinary".

 

They conferenced with me after their sheet was done and created a rough draft without coloring, conferenced with me again, and then started on their finals. In the past coloring goes out the window in big areas so to help prevent that I had color sticks by crayola for them to use in large areas. If you haven't used color sticks they are essentially a naked colored pencil. No wood surrounding the color core.

 

These babies are a lot of work but when students reflected with our 3-2-1 sheet many were proud of the work they did and enjoyed the process and project.

Here is last years post and covers.

4th Grade Yearbook Covers (2015)

When I started in my new district this year the big THANG in the Elementary Art program is 4th graders designing the covers for the yearbook. We do a joint elementary yearbook of all the elementary buildings so it is a pretty big deal. It was also a big and long undertaking but they really did a great job! The middle school art teachers choose the winning covers. One is chosen for the main or back cover and three for the inside.

The bottom right and top left won two of the inside cover spots!

We talk a lot about good design, fonts, best coloring, and creating sketches and drafts. Here are some of the sheets we used for this process, including a rubric when they were finished.

In the past coloring goes out the window in big areas so to help prevent that I had color sticks by crayola for them to use in large areas. If you haven't used color sticks they are essentially a naked colored pencil. No wood surrounding the color core. 

When they were finished everything had to be colored and have a sharpie outline.

Bottom left won a cover spot! 

I think the only change I'll make next year is to do a color test/skill check differently, maybe a coloring sheet!?