LibGuides: Bookmaking in Schools: Activities & Resources

Everyone Has a Story to Tell

Everyone Has a Story to Tell by Zetta Elliott
ISBN: 9781987455656
Publication Date: 2018-09-27
This book has lots of prompts and activities for designing single creative writing workshops or a whole series of them

Creating Complex Characters
These two activities allow students to create a character profile either using autobiographical information, or a picture prompt.
Mythical Beasts
These activities help students exercise their imaginations by developing their own non-human characters and thinking about what they might think and do and say.
Fiction Elements
This activity helps students to articulate the different pieces of their stories and how they will work together to make a story arc that makes sense.
Outline
This activity has students condense their story into just 10 sentences. While 10 is not a magic number, it helps students to understand that even if their story is much longer, their plot and the ideas should be very easily communicated.

Elliott, Zetta. Everyone Has a Story to Tell. Rosetta Press, 2018.

Original Resources

Picture Book Bingo
This activity can be used and adapted with any books in your collection. It will get students looking at literary elements as well as elements of art and design; and they can transfer ideas to their own books.
Picture Book Rubric
This rubric is what we use to assess students' final products, and determine the winner for different categories in our school celebration. The top performers go to committee to decide which book will be entered into the city-wide competition.
Peer Feedback Form
Students use this form to give each other feedback at different points in their process. The form can be adapted for different steps along the way.

Writing Boxes

Writing Boxes, Lisa Von Drasek
This open-access book is full of ideas for ways to incorporate creative writing and art into a library program or maker space. There are also lots of different prompts and activities.

Chapter 6 - Maps
Von Drasek outlines different activities you can do with maps. This can help students develop setting and plot. It includes great printables at the end of the chapter!
Chapter 10 - Letters
This chapter has different activities for students to write letters to different people. A great reflection activity for students to think about the message or moral of their stories.
Chapter 11 - Poetry
Lots of poetry activities including "poem in your pocket" and blackout poetry. The "Where I'm From" poetry at the end of the chapter is an excellent prompt for bookmaking.
Chapter 13 - Informational Writing & Research
Wonderful activities and examples of how you can support students in writing research-based, non-fiction books. A great opportunity to collaborate with content teachers!
Chapter 14 - Memoir
The memoir activities in this chapter will help students to reflect on their own lives and inspire real or fictional stories about actual events and turning points in their lives.

Von Drasek, Lisa. (2019). Writing Boxes: The Reading/Writing Connection in Libraries. University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, http://hdl.handle.net/11299/204534.

Urban Arts Partnership

Visual Art & Writing Project
This is just one activity from the Urban Arts Project. It highlights the use of image-based prompts for creative writing and shows how you can develop a lesson around it. This activity can be expanded to encompass lots of different ways to engage creative thinking and creative writing skills.

Literacy & Bookmaking

Literacy Through the Book Arts

Provides instructions for creating books of approximately fifty different physical forms and variations, and presents classroom examples and discussion of how making these books stimulates learning in children.

Make It! Write It! Read It!

Develops both art and literacy skills through the craft of bookmaking, inspiring elementary-aged children to read, write, and tell stories with their creations. Creative, fun, field-tested projects for teachers, parents, counselors, or other caregivers to work through with children ages 3-8 include 17 different blank book designs. These designs are then applied to 23 specific book projects.

Bookmaking in Schools: Activities & Resources

Writing Prompts