Audience:   Elementary Cycle 3 (Grades 5 and 6)
Language:  English as a second language in Quebec, French as a second language in the rest of Canada.

Duration of the activity: October 2011 to April 2012.
Cost:  Free
Partner: Heritage Canada

 

 

Description

Words and Images is an innovative Blue Metropolis pilot project designed to provide Canadian children aged 10 to 13 with linguistic and cultural experience in their second official language.
 
Through in-person contact with professional writers and artists, students will open their minds and their imaginations to children in another province whose first language is different from their own.

 

This programme combines two artistic disciplines common in young adult literature: writing and illustration.

 

Francophone children will produce a brief story opener in French and send it to their partner Anglophone class in another province.

 

The Anglophone class, with the help of their French teacher and a French-speaking writer, will continue where the text left off, developing a literary work in their second language.

 

At the same time, the Anglophone class will produce a brief story opener in English and send it to their partner Francophone class. With the help of their English teacher and an English-language writer, the Francophone students will expand that text into a longer literary work in English.

 

The ESL and FSL students will illustrate their final text with the help of a professional artist.

 

Final texts and illustrations will be returned to the originating class, where they will be exhibited. They will also be displayed at the 14th Blue Metropolis Literary Festival, from April 18 -23, 2012.

 

Timeline

 

September 1 – October 3, 2011

Registration period

 

October 3-7, 2011

Confirmation of participation

Schools selected to participate in the project will receive a letter of confirmation.

 

October 10-29, 2011

Conference call for teachers, authors, illustrators and program coordinator.

 

Planning of classroom visits for authors and illustrators.

 

Preparatory activities
A pedagogical guide will be made available to provide useful tips and suggestions on how to lead students through the project.

Introducing the project to the class 
Words and Images is loosely based on the "Exquisite Corpse” game developed by the surrealists.

In our activity, students in the class will collectively write a short opening paragraph in their mother tongue and send it on to their partner class. The task of the partner class is to complete the story (in what will be their second language). Total length of the story should be between 525 and 1200 words.

Francophone students will write their short opening paragraph in French and send it to their Anglophone partners who are studying French as a second language.

Meanwhile, Anglophone students will write their short paragraph in English and send it to their Francophone partners who are studying English as a second language.

 

November/December 2011/January 2012 

Author Visits (4 in-class sessions)
A professional author will visit the class five times to guide students through the writing process. On the fifth visit, the author will “pass the torch” on to the Illustrator who will complete the project with the students.

 

January/February/March 2012 

Visits by the Illustrator (4 in-class sessions)
The illustrator helps students illustrate the final text.

End of March 2012

Deadline for submission
Final texts should be emailed to the Project Coordinator. Illustrations should be sent by post to Blue Metropolis.

 

April 18-23, 2012

Exhibit of projects
All projects will be exhibited at the 14th Blue Metropolis Festival.

 

End of April 

Sending the story “home”
Stories and accompanying illustrations will be returned to the class that originated the opening paragraph, to give students an opportunity to see how their partner class developed their idea.