Grade 6 Graphic Design

Some of our grade 6 students have recently finished a large scale writing project, called the Penny Book project. This project involves students writing a series of short stories, capturing memories from different years of their lives.

The students have just finished all the planning, writing, editing and polishing of the stories, and the next step is to get their writing ready for printing. To do this the students are going to be introduced to the basics of graphic design and page layouts. To get the students creating effective page layouts for their stories, we're using a two-step process.

First, Neil Stephenson, one of our staff will be introducing the Apple application 'Pages', the program the students will be using to design their page layouts. Neil will be teaching the students how to modify text, add and enhance photos, and move objects arounds, basically giving the students the basic technical skills needed. Below are the materials the students will use to create a practice page when learning the tools in Pages. We're going to build a sample page for the book "A Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens.

Second, Jill Foran, editor of Kayak magazine is coming in to introduce our students to some of the basic design principles that editors use when doing page layouts. We're so lucky to have someone who does graphic design for a kids magazine to come in an work with our students. We're excited to see how learning the principles of design can help our students communicate more effectively, using the powerful tools they have on their laptops.