Low-Tech Book Project

Not every project has to be high tech. My high school students recently helped the second grade class with a book project. The book was showcasing their grandparents and the relationship each child had with his or her loved ones. The second graders drew pictures representing their grandparents or some of the activities they do with their parents.

For a small burst of technology, the second graders wrote a paragraph about their grandparents and then with the help of the high school students, created a page for the book using Microsoft Word. The second grade students typed their paragraphs, and the high school students taught them how to add boarders, clip art, and color, as well as a photo of the student with his or her grandparent. Each student ended up with a hand-drawn page and a computer-generated page.

Here are examples of the pages the second graders created. As you can see, the artistic guidelines were fairly open, but the second grade students loved being able to create and be fancy.

These pages were copied off in color and made into a book, representing the whole class. It was very pretty and colorful, and the little students loved working with the big kids. After completing the project, I had my high school students write a reflective blog post and all of the comments were positive. They loved helping the elementary students and being able to be computer experts for someone else. One student commented on seeing her little buddy at a school event the next day and being greeted with smiles and a hug. It was a fun way to simply  integrate technology in the lower grades and assign the school students the role of teacher.