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Academic Scrapbooking_ Snapshots of Learning _ Edutopia - Copy
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4/21/2015 Academic Scrapbooking: Snapshots of Learning | Edutopia
http://www.edutopia.org/academicscrapbookingphotographsjournals 1/4
Here’s an assignment: Grab a stack of acidfree paper, some glue sticks, and a few photographs, and setyour students to work on a scrapbook.
Sounds a little like artsandcrafts time? Perhaps, but academic scrapbooking is actually being used as apowerful classroom tool to help students better connect with the subject at hand, from lessons on ancientGreece to an exploration of themes of love in literature.
Heidi Willard, a social studies teacher and enthusiastic advocate of academic scrapbooking, describes itas “personalizing the curriculum.” Students get away from the textbook but not the lesson andcomplete a handson assignment that allows organized classroom movement and results in betterretention of the material. “My experience as a teacher has taught me that it is the activity in the classroomthey remember,” says Willard, who has used scrapbooking with both specialneeds and traditionalstudents. “It is more of a personal adventure.”
A Flash of InspirationWillard discovered the benefits of scrapbooking ten years ago while teaching a group of particularly hardtoreach middle school students. After returning from a short vacation, she showed them her travel journaland photographs. “I noticed they were actually listening to me and making eye contact with me,” she sayswith a laugh. “It was sort of an ‘Aha!’ moment for me as a teacher.”
She convinced the principal of her school to let her take the students on a field trip, gave them disposablecameras, and asked them to make a group scrapbook about the experience. From then on, academicscrapbooking became a staple in her teaching.
Academic Scrapbooking: Snapshots ofLearningA social studies teacher uses photo journals to make learning more personal and immediate for herstudents.
By Alexandra R. MosesAUGUST 29 , 2007
4/21/2015 Academic Scrapbooking: Snapshots of Learning | Edutopia
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The benefits of creating scrapbooks go beyond piquing student interest, Willard says. The projectsencourage independent learning by allowing students to work at their own pace and enhance individuallearning styles and strengths. This, she says, gets students personally invested in the assignments.
“I find that students take more risks in their learning and stop trying to please the teacher so much,” saysWillard, who has turned her enthusiasm for scrapbooking into a small business, creating and selling kitsfor various grade levels and subjects on her Web site, Scrapbooks That Teach(http://www.scrapbooksthatteach.com/).
Still, scrapbooking can be a tough sell to administrators concerned about how such projects will helpstudents meet curriculum and testing standards. “Many people see scrapbooking as just a lot of arts andcrafts and putting stickers on a page,” says Lori Elkins Solomon, who writes a curriculum guide toscrapbooking called "Readin’, Writin’ & Scrappin’." Solomon says calling them photo journals rather thanscrapbooks can help erase preconceived notions of scrapbooking. And Willard offers on her Web site ascript teachers can use to convince administrators of the value of the activity.
Willard and Solomon also emphasize scrapbooking’s more tangible academic applications. In creatingscrapbooks, Willard says, students must use reading, writing, research, and criticalthinking skills.Solomon, who began scrapbooking with her students in 1999, says that for writing classes, scrapbookpage assignments can be used to get students to experiment with various writing styles, includingnarrative, descriptive, expository, and persuasive. Scrapbooking also integrates visual literacy by requiringstudents to combine words and images.
The Big PictureTo effectively use scrapbooking in the classroom, it’s important to think outside the Creative Memories(http://www.creativememories.com) box, even if that’s the style a teacher chooses. It can’t bescrapbooking for scrapbooking’s sake, Solomon says. Teachers must apply the same standards to thescrapbook assignment that they apply to other academic assignments and be sure that it adheres tocurriculum goals. And though stickers and diecuts may be the only way to get a student interested in,Jane Eyre, other methods, such as essays that incorporate graphics or photos, also work.
As an English teacher, Solomon says, her aim with scrapbooks was to get her students writing. For oneliteraryresearch project, students chose a theme and created a book, following certain prompts forindividual pages, such as finding a poem, a work of art, and a great thinker that expressed the chosentheme. Students also wrote an introduction and designed a cover. To help them understand personalidentity and character development, another assignment required students to explore their own identitythrough a personal photo journal that combined studentcreated artwork and photos with the writing.
“Literature becomes personal when they realize there are themes that can relate to their own life,” saysSolomon. By making her assignments more than just essays or research papers, it helped draw out hermore reluctant writers and created better writers in general, she adds.
4/21/2015 Academic Scrapbooking: Snapshots of Learning | Edutopia
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Willard takes a different approach and uses the actual scrapbooking kits she designs. The kits include agroup activity and materials, such as fiber, stickers, and stencils, to help create the scrapbook page.Using a classroom camera, she and the students document the class activity and the students as theywork. The photos are included in the scrapbooks.
For a segment on ancient Rome, for example, Willard had her students build a wax slate with a stylus likeones Roman scribes likely would have used to document their Senate's activities. The students then usedphotos taken during the activity and the provided scrapbooking materials to create a final product thatillustrated their understanding of the lesson. In addition, for each scrapbook assignment, students conductresearch or complete a reading assignment and write a journal entry.
Willard says her students look forward to the scrapbooking days, and have become creative with theprojects, collecting their own objects to include on the pages. The key component, she says, is that theyconnect to what they’re learning. The students not only get to create something that’s their own (whichillustrates the way they understand the underlying lesson), they also “see” themselves through thephotographs as they’re creating it. That, she says, helps them better remember the lessons.
Solomon believes scrapbooking gives students a sense of ownership over their work, not only because it’ssomething they’ve made but also because they’ve invested so much of themselves into the process.
“They become more confident and more connected, emotionally and intellectually,” she says. “It’s not justan academic skill. We don’t want our students to be little machines. We want them to become people whoare selfmotivated and who can navigate the world around them by asking questions and knowing how toconnect.”
ALEXANDRA R. MOSES IS A FREELANCE WRITER IN THE WASHINGTON, DC, AREA WHOSPECIALIZES IN EDUCATION.
Start ScrappingUsing scrapbooking to enhance a lesson doesn’t have to take a lot of preparation or classroom time or even a chunk of change from a teacher’s budget to be effective. Here are some tips andresources for including academic scrapbooking in your classroom:
CONSIDER THE OUTCOME. Scrapbooking can be used in grades K12, but how you implement itdepends on what you want students to get from the assignment. For instance, art teachers can havestudents keep a scrapbook that includes their artwork and journal entries about the pieces sostudents can see their progress through the year. Or, students can learn about culture and diversityby scrapbooking family histories and sharing them with the class. Other simple projects might involveenhancing a writing assignment by asking students to include appropriate photos, artwork, orgraphics.
CREATE A RUBRIC. Though part of scrapbooking is to encourage independence, there should beminimum requirements for the assignments. Willard uses a checklist that students can follow so theyknow what’s expected of them.
4/21/2015 Academic Scrapbooking: Snapshots of Learning | Edutopia
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THINK SMALL. Fullblown scrapbooking kits are available, but teachers can also use what they haveon hand, including staples, transparencies, folders, paper clips, and photocopied maps and images.You can save money by purchasing items that aren’t marked specifically for scrapbooks or by askingstudents to bring in random objects they find to embellish their pages. For photographs, you mightconsider applying for a grant to purchase a classroom digital camera and printer.
USE THE INTERNET. In addition to Heidi Willard's and Lori Elkins Solomon’s sites, which offerscrapbooking kits and forafee downloadable curriculum, respectively, you can also take an onlinecourse, such as the one offered by the Heritage Institute (http://www.hol.edu/index.cfm).