Kilmodan Primary P5-7 Children’s Book Project
BLOG Part 1 by Catriona
Literacy: Learning and Planning
At Kilmodan Primary School, the P5-7 have had a wonderful opportunity to write their own picture books for children, thanks to their teachers Miss Shaw and Mr Semple. There were many things they had to learn before actually creating their story – settings, sentence types, characters, different writing techniques and others things that I will mention throughout this.
Primary 5-7 did a lot of work on punctuation, sentence types and direct speech. They covered how you would use it, when you should use it and when it is not needed.
Characters and settings took a bit longer but all the children came up with great ideas. One of the activities that P5-7 played to help them with creating ideas with a particular setting worked so well that some of the children went on to develop those ideas to make them their actual story.
One of the other things P5-7 did was read other popular picture books to P1-4 of Kilmodan. P5-7 did it with partners and the audience particularly enjoyed their expressive and interactive story telling.
BLOG Part 2 by James
Storyboard: Writing and Illustrating
Next it was time to do the storyboard and put the plan into words and pictures. Everyone doing the project got to work and now knew what their story was going to be about. For example, somebody did a story about a pirate school. Another person did a story about a boy who was very clumsy and somebody else did a story about an old couple on an extraordinary trip. Those are just a few of the stories that were written – there are seven more to enjoy!
Doing the storyboard was a lot of fun. The storyboard format meant that we had to write what would be on each page and do a rough illustration for it. It helped us to organise our writing and clarify the storyline.
When everyone had finished the storyboard, it was then time to actually type the story on a laptop. Everyone was working away at that very well, choosing a font and then using other different fonts and sizes to make their writing more interesting. Once done with the typing, everyone was buzzing about doing the illustrations next.
BLOG Part 3 by Kathryn
Illustrating and Publishing
The final part of the Kilmodan Primary School Book Project was moving on to illustrating our books. First of all we watched some ‘how to draw videos’ to help us see how easy it is to do simple drawings. Then our task was to start illustrating our own books.
It became clear that being consistent with your illustrations was very important. To help, some people used a light box (this is a flat piece of plastic which lights up so that you can trace) and others used the window to trace. Others were able to draw their own characters and scenes using their own artistic skills. We helped each other as we came across problems.
We got some help from various people such as Morag Hood, Paul Bristow and Miss Shaw who organised this whole book project, alongside Mr Semple.
Morag Hood is a very talented author who has published lots of great books. We had a Google Meet with her and she helped us with illustrations and also to understand the process of actually creating a children’s book. Paul Bristow also had a Google Meet with us and he covered more of the illustrating. He writes comics and he told us that it is useful to use your own environment to get inspiration from. Their tips and advice have been very useful.
The Wind Farm Trust have kindly given us a donation to publish our books and our class are so excited to see them printed. The Wind Farm Trust have also given us a little extra money to have a book launch, which we hope will not be spoiled by COVID restrictions.
We are very thankful for all the help to get where we are now, as we await a delivery from the printing company.
Watch this space…
