You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but designing your own artwork can help you appreciate a good book even more. Jennifer Stallworth’s 1st grade class at Cleveland Elementary created their own covers to go along with their new favorite book.
Cleveland is participating in a family literacy program where everyone reads “Adventure According to Humphrey” by Betty G. Birney. During the school day, each class reads that day’s chapter and completes learning activities that go along with it. After each chapter, students participate in daily school trivia and work to complete activities on a bingo board for additional extension ideas. One extension activity is to design a new cover for the book. Stallworth’s students immediately jumped at the opportunity to flex their artistic muscles and enjoyed incorporating scenes from the book into their new book covers.
“My hope is to help my students build positive relationships with literacy and the joy of this shared reading experience will encourage them to be lifelong readers,” said Stallworth. “These activities we’ve been working on have also helped build a sense of community among students at the beginning of the school year, and I want my students to know that the joy of sharing a great book can bring communities together!”
