Literacy Week 2012: Tell a Tiny Story

It's that time of year again. Each year,  the library sponsors a "Literacy Week," which is a lot of work, but also pretty fun.  I'll blog all of our plans later next week, once they're finalized, but for this post, I want to share what we're doing for this year's competition.

 If you haven't seen it, hitrecord.org is an

open collaborative production company, and this website is where we make things together. Writers, musicians, filmmakers, video editors, animators, illustrators, photographers, photo-shoppers... Wanna work with us? When one of our productions makes money, we split the profits 50/50 between the company and the contributing artists.

They have some fun projects, and one of them is the Tiny Stories (my favorite example below). Basically, an image accompanied by a 1-3 sentence story that (in the best of them) surprises the reader, or makes the see things from a different perspective.

Working through the English and Language Departments, we're sponsoring a contest for students to write their own tiny story.  To make it easier, they have the option to draw their own photo, take a photo, or find a photo on Flickr Creative Commons. (If I were doing this as an in-class project with my English class, it would be a great collaborative opportunity with the art teacher!)

We'll have three grade categories:  3-5, 6-9, and 10-12, the prize being our school water bottle (ridiculously expensive, but I cut a bulk deal with the student council!) . And I will, of course, talk to the students about finding creative commons photos.

Anyway, the handout for the teachers to use is below.  Feel free to use and adapt!  I also bought a couple copies of their book, which is great fun to read.

UPDATE:  I should mention, our theme this year is Food for Thought.  Thus, their story needs to be food-related, however they choose to interpret that!

by cat-cat  http://www.hitrecord.org/records/452393

Tiny Story