Accordion-Fold Adventure Books

Grade level: Early Elementary - K

Timeline: 6 Class Periods - 35min

Students will examine narrative strategies used within comics and wordless books, specifically Istvan Banyai’s Zoom.  How movements and slight setting changes lead to a passage of time.  In this lesson parents will be directed to fabricate an adventure with their children while going to school.  During this adventure students will gather small dimensional objects to be placed in the pockets within the accordion fold book to add to the narration.  In the classroom students will construct a 4-page pocket accordion fold book.  In the book students will recreate their adventure with their parents in narrative form including a beginning, middle and end.  The pockets of each page will be filled with either collected objects from their adventure or additional drawn material.  To finish the book, students will create a cover titling their adventure.  Students will share their narrations in a class book reading.  Through the art making process students will explore creative processes by transforming material from their personal lives’ into narrative book format.

Objectives:

1. Students will express a pictorial representation of a personal adventure in wordless narration through the use of space 25.A.1d

2. Students will demonstrate a basic understanding of the bookmaking processes by constructing a pocket book fostering their personal stories 26.B.1d

3. Students will develop safe and proper painting techniques by correctly painting a background that covers all pages of the book 26.A.1e

4. Students will convey material from their personal lives’ into narrative stories including a beginning, middle and end 27.B.1

State Goals:

25.A.1d Visual Arts: Identify the elements of line, shape, space, color, texture; the principles of repetition and pattern; and the expressive qualities of mood, emotion, and pictorial representation.

26.B.1d Visual Arts: Demonstrate knowledge and skills to create visual works or art using manipulation, hand-eye coordination, building and imagination.

26.A.1e Visual Arts: Identify media and tools and how to use them in a safe and responsible manner when painting, drawing, and constructing.

27.B.1: Know how images, sounds, and movements convey stories about people, place and times.

Steps:

-Work Session One:

1. Open a power point; students will look narrative strategies in wordless books and comics. (Attached – annotated images)
2. Show sections of Istvan Banyai’s book, Zoom, and discuss how he uses space to change scenery and give each page a completely new narrative.
3. After the book, have students gather at their tables for a small group activity.
4. Each student in the group will be given an image from Istvan Banyai’s book Zoom that they will collaborative problem solve to recreate his narration, including the beginning, the middle, and end.

-Work Session Two:

1. Gather students around rug to review and show teacher’s narration exemplar.
2. Demo the accordion pocket fold process. (Attached – illustrated steps)
3. Pass out supplies; students begin folding their paper (cut to 7x24) at their seats.
4. Students will select colored tag board sheets and glue them to form the cover and back.

-Work Session Three:

1. Gather students around rug and discuss a story idea and its setting.  Demonstrate a horizontal background to go across the entire accordion book in PowerPoint.
2. Assigned students will pass out students’ books and supplies.
3. Students will draw their setting in marker and fill in the white space with watercolors, filling the entire space. (ie. discussing that the sky is not just at top of page; it touches the horizon line.)

-Work Session Four:

1. Assigned students will pass out students’ books and supplies.
2. Students will include a character and begin props (found 3-dimensional pieces or drawn 2-dimensional) to be placed in the pockets, adding to the narrative.

-Work Session Five:

1. Students will finish their stories, including a beginning, middle, and end for their character puppet, with props alongside the storyline stored within the accordion fold pockets.

-Work Session Six:

1. Students will exhibit their story to their classmates and tell their stories.

(Provide demonstration of collage and finish story with option of collaging papers within pages to emphasize within their drawn stories.)

Materials:

-       18x24 white paper (cut to 7x24)                     - Watercolor

-       Markers                                                                              - Glue

-       Colored Tag Board 6x6 sheets (2per student) - Collage Papers

Additional Material:

Zoom, Istvan Banyai. 1995.

ISBN-10: 0140557741

Motivational Prior Knowledge:

Discuss students’ knowledge of books; its organizational layouts of both text and wordless novels, its construction, including pop-up books.  Paper as an art medium in dimensional, book format.  Have students to think of sources where they have heard/seen stories (books, oral, movies) and inviting them to invent some stories.

Differentiated Learning Activities:

Vocabulary: 

Accordion Fold: Bookmaking technique that forms a zigzag shape.

Collage: technique of applying pieces of paper (or fibers) onto a surface.

Narrative: a message that tells the particulars of an event.

Sequence: the particular order in which related events, movements, or things follow.

Space: areas around, between or within components of a piece

Horizon Line: In an artwork, the line where the ground and sky appear to meet.

Assessment Rubric:   

A 90-100, B 80-89, C 70-79, D 60-69, F 59-Below