Chronicling Living History- Multimedia Project

Objective: I can document living history through multimedia writing by comparing and contrasting past experiences with current living conditions.

Proposal: We are living through an unprecedented historical event. Now is the time for students to become their own historical record keepers. The living history project encourages students to document two-three times a week their perspective of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it affects their lives.

Students will be given one sentence prompts in which they can respond in various ways such as writing creative non-fiction paragraphs, taking pictures with captions, drawing pictures with captions and writing poetry. Students are encouraged to use all five senses in each writing prompt to compare their lives now to the past.

Example prompts: What did you do today? What did you hear today? How did you get outside today? What made you smile today? Have you gone to a store or market? If so, how was it compared to before? If not, imagine what it is like now. Ask a parent/guardian their experience? Have they experienced anything similar to this in the past? How is home different than it was before? What do you miss about school? Etc.

Parent Participation: Specifically for our K-2 grade students, parents are encouraged to buddy write with their students. Parents will tell students the writing prompt and allow their students to choose which medium to best express the writing prompt, then buddy write to document student captions. Parents are also encouraged to model writing and taking pictures with their students.

ELL Students: Writing prompts and instructions will be accessible in native languages. Students are encouraged to write in their native language and translations will be added to anything published or displayed.

Students can use their phones to take pictures and notes, as well as document writing in a physical or online journal. Throughout the project, students are encouraged to send in pictures of their work to their teachers or directly to Ms. Stevenson cstevenson9@ycschools.us. Each grade will have their entries go towards a random drawing to win a scholastic gift card to order a book. Monthly submissions will be compiled into an online magazine for community viewing.

In the fall, the media centers will be decorated with student submissions to display the records they kept. All submissions approved by students and parents will be printed into a book/s once the project is completed.