A little project about books:

Cultural heritage: Describing an old school book and a present one

A visit to the museum class room where there are many different old school books

Describing skills in writing

Thinking skills: Does my study help me in designing a future school book?

- Choose an old school book and describe it at least with 6 sentences.

The pupils were not given any more advice about what to write about. They were free to think and find the information they wanted to write about.

Outcomes

- name of the book

- the amount of the pages

- the place where the book was printed, the printing year

- material of the cover and the pages, colour of the pages

- pictures in the book, the quality of the pictures (colours, details etc.)

- exercises in the book (had to be done in a notebook, no writing in the books)

- for what age the book was meant for (sometimes for two classes 5-6th)

- who had written the book

- the amount of the text, the text types (capital letters, oldfashioned letters)

The pupils were given the same task about the same modern school book which is being used now.

They started writing and used the ideas they had got from the first task.

There was a general discussion about the parameters they had studied in two books.

The pupils were given a task to write down 6 best parameters from their studies which they would think would help them to design a future school book.

The pupils wrote and drew ideas about a future book.

After they had finished they were asked if the 6 parameters had helped them to design the future book. Many pupils said that they had helped them.

What did they learn? Did they learn about thinking?

They learned to collect information, use the information doing another task. They learned about reflecting on their work.

There is always the question about time. I did this project myself in four days. I could have carried on longer with the theme but there was no more time.