Bookmaking and Literacy

Bookmaking and other arts integration projects can be implemented in ways that facilitate student choice and voice in the classroom. When students are provided with choices, creative outcomes and intrinsic motivation are more likely. When students create, they make personal meaning of their learning. Demonstrating learning through an artform such as bookmaking has the potential to motivate students and support personal expression.

Arts-integrated projects also provide teachers with avenues to differentiate instruction, an instructional approach that strives to meet the diverse needs of all learners. Through Bookmaking (and arts integration) students at any grade level can demonstrate their learning in virtually any discipline.

When students discuss and describe the contents of books they make, they practice oral language skills, vocabulary, and share new knowledge and understanding. They deepen literacy skills by writing stories, creating original poetry, or through authoring informational texts. When adding graphics and illustrations to a personalized book form, students also develop visual literacy.

What is Visual Literacy?

According to the National Art Education Association:

Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, comprehend, appreciate, use, and create visual media, using conventional as well as contemporary and emerging media, in ways that advance thinking, decision-making, communicating, and learning.

Cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen discovered in her research on aesthetic development that children and adults alike–look for stories in art, even when the artist did not intend them. In this first “Aesthetic Stage” viewers are considered “accountive” storytellers. They make concrete observations about an artwork that contributes to a narrative. Our challenge as educators is to locate the works of art that make this creative storytelling process visible, and provide art making experiences in which students practice these strategies. If selected appropriately, both contemporary and historical artworks with narrative content have the potential for many levels of interpretation and are especially intriguing for young viewers.

Side x Side has been helping K–12 teachers implement arts integrated lessons and units for the past 10 years. Visual and creative literacies are at the core of almost everything Side x Side does. Side x Side has many examples of lesson plans that integrate bookmaking and resources that support visual literacy in the classroom.