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Some time ago I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts and they mentioned a book that was soon to release called "Charlie and the Tortoise." You can find that book on Amazon [url=https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Thinkers-Tortoise-MJ-Mouton/dp/0692548270]here[/url].
The book inspired me to try something similar with my own students last school year, so I came up with what I called the Child Scientist Storybook Project. These were 10th grade biology students. The gist of the project was to have each student select a scientist from history, research his/her life and accomplishments or discoveries, then write an illustrated children's book about that person. But, they had to take the scientists and make them the age of a child, and re-tell their story as if they were doing things children would do and still make their discoveries. The idea was for them to engage their creativity and figure out how to take a real history and remake it into something that younger kids would understand.
The project took place over the course of a couple of months in the spring semester. I gave them very little in-class time to work on it because we had plenty of biology content to explore. In the end, each student created an illustrated children's book that they were able to share with their peers. Then, best of all, we took them to the three elementary schools in that district and they were able to read them to actual young children!
As far the approach to making the book, I gave my students options. I allowed them to hand write and draw their illustrations if they wished, or to get a little more creative or professional with it. At some point about a week into the project, I realized that there were some really cool options for my students to try if they chose.
There's an online bookmaking tool called [url=https://www.storyjumper.com/]Story Jumper[/url] that many of my students used to create their stories. It provides templates to make it easy to illustrate. They could make their story and order a soft-back book of it for something like $10, which was a great deal I thought.
But even more impressive to me were the ones who chose to actually publish their book through Lulu. I'll link below the three books that were published this way. Understand, this means that three of my students from last year are officially published authors with books that other people can buy, all before they even graduated the 10th grade!
[url=http://www.lulu.com/shop/matthew-norris/watson-and-crick-and-the-twisted-ladder/hardcover/product-22662401.html]Watson and Crick and the Twisted Ladder[/url] by Matthew Norris
[url=http://www.lulu.com/shop/preston-starkey/galley-and-his-telescope/hardcover/product-22677360.html]Galley and His Telescope[/url] by Preston Starkey
[url=http://www.lulu.com/shop/maggie-thompson/bens-amazing-discovery/hardcover/product-22663646.html]Ben's Amazing Discovery[/url] by Maggie Thompson
Anyway, I just wanted to share this project with you all in case you'd like to give it a shot. The vast majority of my 110 students last year really enjoyed the experience and really impressed me with their creativity. Being required to take a real history and distill it not only into their own words but into a way that young children could understand forced them to think at a higher level. Many thought, going into it, that writing a children's book was easy, but they quickly realized this was not the case.
I broke the project up into 5 different components over the course of the two months so that it didn't seem quite so daunting.
I would encourage anyone reading this to give your students opportunities to combine art with science if you don't already. The two really do go hand in hand.
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