Lesson Plan on Bookmaking

Readings: Anna Kindler, Worship of Creativity and Artistic

Development of Young Children, p. Zurmeuhlen, Praxis pp. 18-31, Art
and Design in the Digital Age, Reaction Report to Student
Presentation, Constructive Learning
Unit Title: Everyone Has at Least One Book in Them; We all
have a Story to Tell
Slides and discussion of theme
-Papermaking
-Storyboard, flip books, cartooning and tunnel books
-Non-adhesive binding and bookmaking
Presenting/Sharing
Book as object: responding to/transforming the found book
Follow-up: comparing traditional materials with digital in the making of
a book.
Rationale
To teach constructive learning in Art Education and the importance of
setting the emotional climate of the classroom.
Think back to your own memories of school. What stands out with
the most graphic detail? Usually emotional and personal experiences
(hopefully positive) will be the most memorable.
Students will also remember a concrete hands-on experience
where they had some ownership and autonomy rather than being
over-directed by the teacher.
What does it mean for students to personalize and to construct
learning? Students come to class with prior knowledge. The way
children learn is by connecting that with new knowledge to give it
meaning. Students can become empowered to feel valuable as they
already when they recognize personal experience as a resource to
build upon. When students are motivated, there are less classroom
management problems.
How can one individualize and personalize teaching within the
structured environment of schools and curriculum guides? The
misconception and problem of fitting art into the classroom is that
teachers are often trained to believe that art has to be free and
without structure in order to allow for the creative natural power of

the child. On the other hand they do not learn a method of

implementing this freedom within the structured environment of the
classroom. They soon give up and grasp unto recipes, which allow
some down time for the teacher. The other outcome of the natural
essentialist philosophy of art is that teachers soon divide the students
into those who are born creative and those who are not, where the
criteria is based on those who can draw realistically and those who
cant even draw a straight line.
As a teacher, art educator, researcher and artist, I like the challenge
of working within a structure, which still invites imaginative
interpretations and divergent possibilities. Bookmaking is a good
example. There are endless forms and interpretations of the book. It
could be simply considered a collection of pages in a nonlinear order.
One student created a box from a pizza container lined with old maps,
and created a holder for her pages. The book and cover can become
very personalized.
Is culture something we consume or create? Advertising and toys
encourage children to be consumers of culture, which can be seen in
waves of fashion. For example if you asked young students to gather
their favourite images, the girls would probably choose something like
spice girls and the boys the latest video game. Through the book even
a clich can become personalized through the story, the series of
actions and manipulation of the childs imagination. Students often
anthropomorphize. For example one student of mine in grade six
created a culture about a colony of ants through drawings of tunnel
houses, food and behavioral patterns. In Praxis, Symbol Presence,
(1990) Zurmuehlen gives an example of Mr. Peanut taking on
characteristics through the repetition of the childs drawings. The new
computer animated films (Bugs, Pokomon, Toy Story) could be
starting points for children to develop their own cast of characters and
stories.
Objectives
Skills
- how to recycle paper into pulp and form a sheet of paper.
- how to sew a book with the traditional Japanese non-adhesive
binding method
- drawing skills: Framing the picture. Show examples of camera angles
in advertising: birds eye, scale of figure, worms eye, relationship of
figures to each other, action... Put visibly around room.
- non-toxic printmaking without a press. This will be shown in the

slides of student work and will be taught as a unit.

Supplemental Concepts
- to encourage neural branching and synthesis of ideas with images
and text.
- to understand the power of images to create meaning
-to validate personal experience as a resource to construct new
knowledge and skills.
-to develop ideas beyond the clich
-to encourage the idea that everyone has at least one book in them,
everyone has a story to tell.
- to see the book as a container to collect, assemble, reassemble:
sketches, photos, personal and found text and image
-to create fiction from autobiography

Procedure
Lesson One: Slides: Encounters with art. I usually stimulate with
slides/discussion. If you dont have the resources you can stimulate by
reading/showing a book, making it clear that you dont want them to
tell the same story, but their own. In this particular class we will look
at slides and discuss examples from artists who had an interest in the
psychological and personal in the form of bookmaking and examples of
student work on this unit.
Structural steps in the making of a book:
Lesson Two: Papermaking
Lesson Three: Storyboarding
Stimulus: reading, acting like their favourite animal (depends on age)
brainstorm stimulus ideas.
Prewriting: brainstorming with a partner
Drafting: storyboard with a partner, put together a tunnel book and
flip book
Lesson Four: Editing/Changing it
Proofreading: check it, decide on form for final book
Publishing: final draft. Work independently. Embellish with materials.
Transform to larger final book. Choice of materials: paint, collage,
markers, crayons, whatever you can bring in. See how differently
each partner finishes his or her final book.
Lesson Five: Presenting, sharing it
Lesson Six: Create an object from a secondhand book. Accents the
concept of the book as a concrete object. Once a year the Public
Library sells off and finally gives away discards.

Notes to remember:
Have samples out for students as they enter the room. Even the
most uninterested can be seduced with materials. Think of the entire
experience from when they enter the room to closure.
If you have an unruly class show them step by step how to
structure the body of the book, using a standard sized paper.
Individual differences are to be encouraged in the content and
embellishment of the final book. Brainstorming with a partner is used
to generate the initial ideas.
Follow-up
The book is also something that could combine analog and digital.
Make a digital book or begin with traditional materials and methods
and then compare to digital. Experience both the concreteness of
handmade paper with the temporality of manipulation on the screen.
Do some children learn best through one method better than another?
Be prepared to change strategies, methods and materials to fit the
needs of individual students.
Use the handmade book as a resource for creating a digitallycreated book on the web and by scanning, cutting pasting and
printing.