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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I recommend devoting one or two days a week in the final months of school to writing class yearbook pages. Like a normal yearbook, each page has a theme. You can select from this list, use your own ideas, or brainstorm topics with your students. If your class has particular inside jokes, you can make those your topics. Generally, my goal is to create four to ten different pages over the course of about a month and a half to two months.

Fall Sports Highlights / Spring Sports Highlights Lunchroom Highlights Drama Highlights (the theatrical variety, NOT the interpersonal kind!) Our Trip to the Shakespeare Festival Places We Visited P.E. Highlights When We Were 4 Years Old Predictions in 10 Years Predictions for Next Year What Was Popular This Year / Time Capsule “Last Will and Testament” (especially with seniors/8th graders)

There are several ways to elicit the information for the pages. I suggest varying your approach because it helps maintain interest.

Here are some options: (1) Ask students to write their answer to a question related to the topic on a small piece of paper and hand that in. I have them write in English, so they can be more honest and creative. (2) Ask students to bring in a photo related to the topic, either one that they have hanging around on their phone, or one they take special for the page. You might not get photos from everyone, but that is also authentically how producing a yearbook works. (3) Ask students to draw a picture related to the topic. These are not just simple sketches; the pictures will be part of the page.

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(4) Take a class survey and tally the results on the board, and then use the survey as a jumping-off point to include individual students’ details. (5) You might have your class artist draw pictures of what the class is discussing as you write. These pictures can be incorporated into the layout of the page.

Writing the pages is like Write and Discuss but the content is being discussed and written for the first time as the writing is happening. Here is a video of my class writing a page together a couple of years ago. https://youtu.be/THqcdqu0isM

Because the writing takes longer than your typical Write and Discuss, you will most likely need to give the class something to do in addition to listening and discussing for twenty to thirty minutes. They might make illustrations as they listen and discuss, or they might write down 5 useful phrases (to be used when they are writing their partner’s page), or they might look for 3 “pull quotes” from the text that you generate can be used as “call outs”.

First, it is a good idea to write a couple of introductory sentences. You might lead with a question or a short narrative segment. If you can begin the narrative segment with someone talking or thinking, or with a specific, concrete action, or a rhetorical question, you may be surprised at how professional your writing sounds.

For example, on a page called Lunchroom Highlights: Starting with a question: What is your favorite period of the day? Most students say “Lunch!” Our cafeteria is a fun place. Starting with action: A table sings “Happy Birthday” very loudly to a friend in the cafeteria. The whole school starts singing. Our cafeteria is a fun place.

Then, to transition into the rest of the page, pull one of the students’ pictures or answers, or ask details of one of the students who responded to the survey. This part of the process is like Student Interviews (explained below) combined with Write and Discuss. First, write the fact that the student has provided. Then ask the student a few follow-up questions and add a sentence or two to the paragraph. Then move on to another student.

I do not recommend doing class yearbook pages day after day after day, but rather doing one every week or so. By the end of the year, you can have four to six built up if you start now! Added to the partner pages (explained below), which take about three days of class time, you can get a nice yearbook put together in time for the last days of school, when you can have a yearbook signing party for a period or a half-period. Page 524

Partner Yearbook Pages

These are individual pages that students write and illustrate about a partner. In making these pages, you have an opportunity to teach about how to use the computer to write things that we need to look up.

First, you will need to have students generate the content about their partner. They will interview their partner and generate two images of their partner — one “head shot” and one “action shot.”

I let my students conduct the interviews in their stronger shared language(s). This way, they get more accurate information from their partner, whose ability to respond in the course language may be limited. In upper-level classes, you might have them interview each other in the language.

I think it is ideal to provide the questions in the course language with my own answers (or the answers of a well-liked staff member at the school) written in the course language, so that students can use the answers as a scaffold to understand the questions later when they are interviewing their partner. You can use any questions, but these are a good starting place.

1. What was your favorite class this year? Ms. Hargaden says that her favorite class this year was French, or maybe Spanish. She can’t decide. 2. What was your favorite project this year? She says that her favorite project was the Word-Off. 3. Who were your best friends this year? Her best friends are Ms. Overvold and Ms. Blackford. 4. What was the best day of the year? The best day of the year for her was the day when we went outside and did a Running Dictation. 5. What is the best food in the cafeteria? She thinks that the food in the cafeteria is generally gross, but she likes the salad bar. 6. Who was your favorite teacher this year? Her favorite teacher is her yoga teacher, Gretchen. 7. What activities did you do at school this year? She played kickball in the Teacher Kickball Tournament. She sang in the Talent Show. 8. What activities did you do outside of school this year? She went to yoga class and visited China. 9. What school are you going to next year? She is changing schools. She is going to the School of Teacher Training.

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10. What is your advice for next year’s seventh grade? Her advice for the seventh graders next year is listen to Mr. Kim, always do your homework, and do not share your locker combination. 11. What is the strangest thing that happened this year? The strangest thing that happened to Ms. Hargaden this year was when she got lost on the way to school because she was thinking about something else. 12. What is the best / worst thing that happened to you this year? The best thing that happened to her this year was having awesome students! The worst thing that happened to her this year was having to move rooms two times!

Before the students get to work interviewing their partner, you can provide more input by talking about your (prepared) answers. In order to make the answers comprehensible, you might act them out or do a quick Visual Story or bring in a photo or use some other kind of scaffolding. Then at the end of that class period, students interview their partners and write their answers.

A Note on Technology

In order to write the page in the course language, students may need to look some words up. This is fine; using technology to assist our writing is a skill that everyone needs these days. Sometimes we need to ask our students to produce writing without recourse to reference materials and at other times, so we can get a clear picture of the language that is developing inside their heads, and at other times we can help them learn to write with the support of technology. This is, actually, a much more authentic writing task. Myself, as a nonnative speaker of the languages I teach, I often use the online tools referenced below to help me when I compose writing, to learn new words or just to double-check my phrasing.

I like to teach my students some ways to use the internet wisely. One thing that we all need to know as language teachers is that Google Translate is actually getting really accurate. You can read more about the reasons why here.

I pasted three of my own responses into Google Translate just to test this out, and they actually came back in almost-perfect, idiomatic French with just the slightest whiff of artificial intelligence.

Myself, I do not think this is anything to hide from our students. Knowledge is power, and we cannot really keep anything from anyone anymore anyway, because they can find out anything they want with the click of a button.

What students do need to know is how to verify the results of Google Translate. I like to make sure that words I **think** I know actually mean what I envision. A great way to do that is to take an unknown word from the translation and put it in to Google Image Search, and see what comes up. For instance, if students are unsure

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if “casier” actually means “locker” they can put that into the image search and quickly see a whole bunch of images that verify that, indeed, that word is accurate. See? Another quick trick they can do is to take a meaningful clause out of the translation, put it in quotes, and Google it. If it returns a lot of hits, then it is a pretty sure bet that it is actually something that a person would type.

Another trick is to teach them to use the site Linguee to see possible ways to say things. This site is amazing because it pulls up examples of the phrase you want, from many, many published sources. I love using it to help me, as a non-native speaker, find new turns of phrase that I have never thought of using. The trick is to put the phrase you want in quotation marks so it searches for that exact phrase, and to play around with multiple ways to phrase it in English if the first search does not return good results.

For instance, I put in “best day of the year” and got no exact matches, but when I shortened it to “best day of” I got many examples of that phrase, said several different ways. This is a valuable learning tool, because many language students tend to think that there is “one way” to say something, when in reality there are usually many ways a proficient speaker might express that thought.

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Here are just a few ways to express this idea in French. Please note that, far from “cheating,” using language from a real, culturally-authentic, meaningful context like this actually forces students to interact with the language in a very focused way, and thus is actually contributing to their language acquisition.

le plus beau jour de ma vie sa meilleure journée passée sur le rallye la journée a été la plus belle de toute ma vie la plus belle journée de votre vie

Editing the Partner Pages

You might ask students to let you look over their pages with them so you can give them feedback. I find this much more efficient than taking them home to correct. As I work through the pages with them, I can point things out about what I am correcting.

I suggest only allowing students to bring you four sentences at a time for editing. I would expect them to then go make the changes I suggest, then write the next four sentences, print them out, and bring them to me later. This cuts down on the line of kids waiting for you to look over their work.

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If a student brings you a page that is a total mess, because they went totally “off the farm” and used Google Translate to spit out convoluted sentences that you cannot understand, I suggest that you stop editing it, ask them to go back, simplify, use Google Images, check the internet for examples of phrases, and use Linguee. I feel like if kids are going to be so lazy as to not do any of this checking before bringing you their writing, then it is not your job to sit down and try to make sense of their strange sentences! This is another great reason to ask them to bring you their writing in small batches, so you can catch these lazy kids early and coach them to work harder before calling their writing “done enough to edit.”

Once the writing is done, the students will need to make images of their partner. One of these images is a “ headshot” like a school picture and the other is an “ action shot” showing their partner doing something referenced in the Q and A.

I want my students to stretch themselves to be creative when they do work like this. So, I would not not allow them to just plop a photo of their partner into the page. They can either sketch their partner from life, or from their imagination. If they are artistically challenged, I encourage them to use a device to take a picture of their partner and use the “Cell Phone Light Box Tracing Trick.” This trick is LIT. Literally, it is LIT, by the light of the phone or (even better) iPad or other tablet. They simply pull the picture of their partner up on their device, place a piece of blank paper over it, and trace the outlines of the photo onto their paper. They can then use the tracing to draw over and color in. This little trick can also be done by printing the image on paper and taping it to a window to do the tracing.

Then have students upload their images to the Google Doc that they are producing for the yearbook.

You might want to ask the students to name their document using a standardized format (for example: Period 1 Yearbook André Miller) so that you can cut and paste them into one big document that you can send to the printer and staple into yearbooks (with the addition of a cover and a couple of pages for signatures during the Yearbook Signing Party).

The cover can be simple or complex. You might have students who finish early work together to design a cover for the yearbook. This makes a nice “sponge” activity for students who turn in their pages early.

Well, from a former high-school newspaper and yearbook editor, HAPPY YEARBOOKING!

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Below, you will find a sample assignment sheet for this project from my friend Nissa Quill, a French teacher from Maryland, which shows how you can modify and adjust this project for your own needs, followed by an explanation of Student Interviews.

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AP Final Project: THE CLASS YEARBOOK

Task: To create a Yearbook about the many memories you have gathered as a High School Student.

In French, you will write a summary about your High School memories. 5 of the 18 categories listed below must be included. You must write at least 150 words per category.

Freshman Year Sophomore Year Junior Year Senior Year Sports/Clubs/Activities Parties Special School Events Teachers/School Staff Goals for the future Anecdotes/Personal Stories Good Times Bad Times Special Friends Favorite Class(es) After-school jobs/Activities/Responsibilities What we Wore Music We Loved *If there is another category you wish to write about let me know.*

Your finished work must also include: (1) A tasteful and appropriate decorative cover (2) A table of contents (3) A dedication page (min. 50 words)

Student Interviews

Student interviews are a powerful way to ramp up the interest level in class, because suddenly students take center stage in a way they have not yet done in class.

Social learning is a powerful motivating factor for children and adolescents, and how fortunate for us that it just so happens to mesh perfectly with the language goals that Novice and Intermediate students have - to communicate on topics of personal importance.

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For the interview, a student takes the stage for the entire Guided Oral Input session - about 15 minutes of class time - and you just ask them questions. These questions can be asked from a list (samples are provided at the end of this section) or you can make them up as you go. Many teachers find it comforting to start with a list and then add in questions that come up as you work with the pre-planned questions. I do not always go in the same order, because I want to keep things feeling fresh, but having that list does help you to feel grounded as you begin the activity.

Some teachers have the class take notes on the proceeding, giving quizzes at the end of the interview. You can also give “cumulative” quizzes over a batch of interviews, to keep the first ones fresh on students’ minds, and to reinforce the information and language used in previous interviews.

Do not force every single student to participate in an interview. At first, I recommend asking for volunteers. As students are interviewed, you can cross them off the class list. I have found it helps to do a few interviews of the first volunteers and then ask the students to write me a note on a small slip of paper at the end of class one day, to let me know if they want to be interviewed alone or with a partner.

As you pass out the papers, you can invite students who do not want to be interviewed to write a sentence to say that they do not, and tell them that you will give them an opportunity for independent make-up work on their own time at home. I do this so that those who are truly petrified of being interviewed have an opportunity to decline, but so that those who simply do not want to participate have to truly think about whether or not they will want to do the make-up work.

Then, working privately with the students who declined, probably during reading time, I give them the make-up work that is very easy -- providing their own information for their page in the Class Yearbook, in English, which I translate for the book. I have the artists or other volunteers illustrate their page based on their responses. I do not make this option very public, because I want only students who truly are not emotionally ready to be interviewed to choose it. Student interviews work best when we’re “all in it together” and so I want to make sure that only those students who are truly anxious or in need of accommodations are choosing to not participate.

If a student opts to be interviewed with a partner, that simply means that they sit in the Special Chair and have their partner sit beside them to offer moral support. Many students appreciate that friendly presence beside them at the front of the room.

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Here is Jody Noble’s description of the original “Special Chair”:

“When my friend, Beth, gave up teaching to live a life of sanity and happiness outside the classroom, she left me her teacher chair. It was really a stool with a chair back. It was tall and kind of cool looking. It changed my life. Whenever I decide to do this activity, I ask the children if they would like to answer some questions. It is not mandatory, but rarely does a child refuse.

The chair has rules, of course:

1. No dissing of the person in the chair, not ever, no way, no how. 2. You do not have to tell the truth while sitting in the chair. It’s up to you. 3. People may disagree with you, but they may not change your mind. Only you do that. 4. You have the final word and then Profe has the final word after that. 5. You may only do what you are told to do or risk being replaced by the next lucky person.

“If you think they follow the rules just because the rules are explicitly stated, you would be mistaken. We practice them and practice them and practice them. Much modeling, much “replay” when mistakes are made, much elation and praise when rules are followed. Emotional SAFETY is my #1 concern. Below are some student reflections about the chair. I got a beautiful peek into what their experience in Spanish class has been like. They think it’s the chair!

Colin: All of the attention is on you. (Me: Is that always a good thing?) YES. Omar: When you go up there (on the chair), you wonder what’s going to happen. It’s exciting when it’s like that – like a mystery. Ellie: We don’t have the chair in any other class. It reminds us of when we were little and when we got to do “make believe”. Jeannie: You don’t have to tell the truth when you are sitting on the chair if you don’t want to; and that is really fun. People don’t really argue with you and make you stay in reality. I like that. I also like that my teacher makes all her questions clear – she always does that, no matter what we are talking about. Anna: After class, I can’t remember if we were speaking Spanish or English. I am not aware. It’s weird, but cool. I just “know” what we talked about. Alex: When you sit in it, it turns into a magical, wonderful chair. Cameron: When you’re on the chair, it makes you feel powerful.”

Asking Questions

You can ask the questions in the course language, using gestures and the board to scaffold their understanding, but if a student answers in a stronger language, that is fine, and very much expected at this level, especially in a situation where all eyes are on them. You simply restate their answer in the course language, establish meaning for anything that might not be comprehensible, and continue. Page 533

After each answer, except maybe to the most basic of questions such as “what is your name”, it is recommended that you spend some time marveling at the student’s amazing answer. This is theatre, and much like the attitude that you assumed during Card Talk - absolute wonder at the amazing students we have in our classes.

If you truly think about it, on a deep level, we should be marveling at our students’ uniqueness, for none of them is exactly like any other student we will ever encounter in our lives. And each one has the potential for causing immense good in this world, or immense suffering for that matter. Treating each and every interaction like a precious opportunity to shape the future, and thus pouring as much admiration and positive regard into each interaction with our students, on and off the Special Chair, is the heart and soul of what education should be.

Building up our students, being the conduit for the class to experience the unique and worthy and amazing people that they truly are, is big, important work in teaching. Insisting on absolute respect from the class, for each and every student, helps shape our classroom communities into safe havens for our students to appreciate each other for their individuality, and for us to feel part of a group that is special - a place of listening, sharing, and being known and accepted for who we truly are. Is that not one of our greatest wishes as human beings?

Jody laid the groundwork for this very engaging and community-building communicative teaching strategy, and many teachers after her have continued with this idea, adapting it to their classrooms and personalities. Specific strategies that are based on the Special Chair include the work of Bryce Hedstrom (La Personal Especial) and Sabrina Janczak (Star of the Week).

Kid Quiz Notebook

During the interview, it is a good idea to have your artists sketch the student being interviewed, on a piece of chart paper, either their face/head or their whole body, with symbols and drawings around them to show the things that they said during the interview. You can also have the Quiz Writer or the Story Writer keep notes on the students who are interviewed.

I like to keep these notes in a special notebook called the Kid Quiz Notebook. Each student has their own page in the notebook in the order in which they were interviewed. At the top of the page the writer notes the student’s name and the date of the interview, and then writes in bullet points all the information that was learned about the student.

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You can use the Kid Quiz Notebook to give periodic Quick Quizzes on the previously-interviewed students. I like to ask a total of eight to ten questions. The first four or five questions are about the most recentlyinterviewed student. Then the next two or three questions are on the second-most-recently-interviewed student. For the rest of the questions, I flip back to previous students’ pages, randomly selecting students from past interviews and asking questions from their pages. This ensures that the students who were interviewed in the past continue to get “exposure” in the quizzes.

You might want to make a note of the date that they were used in a quiz, at the top of their page to denote that they have been used again in a quiz, so that you can keep track of who has not been mentioned in a while. Like any content from class, the information gained from student interviews and written in the Kid Quiz Notebook can be used to create reading and listening assessments.

On the following pages, you will find sample lists of questions that can be used for student interviews. The first list is modified from Anne Matava’s questionnaire and the second list gives selected questions from Bryce Hedstrom’s La Persona Especial handout. Bryce’s list is much longer than the scope of this section allows, but it available in many languages, for free download at his website, www.brycehedstrom.com.

Student Interview Questions (based on Anne Matava’s Student Questionnaire)

Name/Nickname Birthday The birthday you wish you had Names and ages of siblings Town you were born in Other places you have lived Pets and their names Your favorite things to do Your job (If you don’t have one make it up) Instruments, sports, or games that you play Sports players, artists, or musicians whom you admire A celebrity whom you find attractive Your favorite music groups/singers What you like to eat and drink Something you REALLY don’t like A place you like to go and why Chores you have to do around the house Your favorite item(s) of clothing Any abilities or talents you have, however unusual Something you have that is unusual Something you don’t have that you really want Name of your best friend(s) Your favorite store Something you fear Someone you admire Your favorite movie(s)

Student Interview Questions (from www.brycehedstrom.com)

Bryce divides his list into the “basic” questions and the “in-depth” questions. These are just samples. There is a much more extensive list on his website under the “Free Stuff” tab on the website given above.

Basic:

Name/Name you prefer Age Do you have your license? Do you like living in ___? How long have you lived here? Do you have much family nearby? What did you do last summer?

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Do you have a job? What music do you like? What video games or sports do you like? What do you like to study? Dislike studying? What is your favorite class? Least favorite class?

Deeper Questions (many more on brycehedstrom.com):

What is there about your life now that would make your 8 year old self cry? What dreams did you used to have? If you had to leave your house every day, where would you go? What would you do? Crashing on a friend’s couch, hanging out at a coffee shop, and playing video games do not count. You will have to do something all day, every day. What would you do? If you knew you were going to die in one year, what would you do? What are you missing in your life? How can we help you with that? What do you really like, but hesitate to admit? Has there ever been a time in your life that you have overcome racism? If you were made the mayor of your city for one day, what would you do? Is it possible to fall in love just by looking into someone’s eyes?

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