End of the Year Option 4: Class Yearbook This project creates a lasting artifact that students may cherish for years to come. In my AP English class, we were a tightknit bunch, and sometimes a little goofy and naughty. Inside jokes flew all over, oftentimes inappropriate, about the salacious content of some of the Shakespeare plays and other literature we were reading. And at the end of the year, led by Lydia, who had, sitting quietly in class, sketched all of us throughout the year, a group of us worked secretly, drawing and writing under our desks, to create a class yearbook containing all her drawings and the inside jokes and messages to each other. Somehow we convinced our teacher to put together printed, laminated copies for each kid in class, and the day that we distributed these to the others and all laughed and signed each other’s books was one of the highlights of the whirlwind graduation season. A lot of the pomp and circumstance of graduation seemed hollow and formulaic. But the day when we reminisced and laughed over our shared experience that year was a real experience of community that has stuck with me ever since. When I cooked up the idea to do a Class Yearbook Project with my kids, it was with this meaningful experience in mind. Our goal is to create an artifact for each student to take with them, to remember the community that they built with us this year. On one of the last days of school, students will receive a printed copy with signature pages at the end, and sign each other’s yearbooks. To create the books, we write class pages and partner pages. Each of these processes is explained below.
Class Yearbook Pages To make a class yearbook page, we write together in class. I sometimes add more students’ information later. However, I do not aim to get everyone a mention on every page. That is not how normal yearbooks work; we appear here and there throughout the book, sometimes in words, sometimes in pictures, sometimes both.
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