Utah: By Kids, For Kids
School: Venture Academy
City/State: Marriott-Slaterville, UT
Grade(s): 6, 7, 8
Format(s): Children's book
Subject(s): English Language Arts, Social Studies, Visual Arts
Project Overview
Students at Venture Academy in Marriott-Slaterville, Utah created this book to introduce their state to children using self-selected topics from a pre-approved list. Students were required to write a research paper on their topic to become an expert. Once they completed writing papers, the next step was to reduce their paper to fit a word count of 190-210 words.
After the writing was completed, the students had to illustrate their topic. This was done under the guidance of a visual arts teacher. Before the writing reached publication stage it had to be perfect, so revision was a major factor. No student revised their writing less than 5 times. The same process was used with the illustration; no student revised an illustration less than three times.
Students worked with a local publishing company to help with the layout and format. The company also assisted in the process of obtaining an ISBN and connecting to Amazon. A copy of this book can be purchased here.
This project was inspired by a similar project on Wisconsin which can be seen here.
How This Project Can Be Useful
- Exemplifies a useful product with an authentic audience
- A project model that could be done in any state, with a genuine audience
- Simple format, compelling visual presentation
- Shows a product that required extensive research, through collecting and collating multiple sources of information
- The writing of a book for a younger audience allowed these students to succinctly demonstrate their understanding of the content