First Year Yearbook Club

Over the summer, a friend and I talked about the school's yearbook and how we could revitalize it.  We were disappointed with the prior year's for a couple of reasons.   First of all, the yearbook's were not distributed to the kids until July.  Then, we ran into tracking down those kids who were on vacation or simply forgot to pick up the yearbook's on the "pick up" date.  That was time consuming and somewhat frustrating at times.  The second reason was the pictures were not all that.  Some were too dark, too small, too blurry, and some were just puzzling as to why they had even made it in the yearbook.  It seemed as if the yearbook was thrown together without too much thought behind it.

After passing ideas around, Cary and I formulated a plan.  Our plan was to create a Yearbook Club consisting of only 5th graders and let them build the yearbook.  Since this was our first year stepping up to coordinate the yearbook committee, we had a lot of loose ends to tie up.  Finally, after persevering, several e-mails, discussions, and meetings, the Yearbook Club was formed.

Our thought was that the yearbook should be about the 5th graders since they're the leaders of the school.  The big dawgs.  Being groomed and educated to making the transition to 6th grade.

We had a great response to our yearbook club with 20 kids participating so far.  Club members meet during lunch and work on building pages of the yearbook with pictures they choose.  We also had a yearbook cover design contest for the 5th graders with the winning cover being awarded a free yearbook.  The Club narrowed down three of the best designs and then each were scanned giving access to all of the teachers.  Each grade voted on their favorite one and the design that received the most votes, won.

Below is the winning design.  I have to give thanks to the art and 5th grade teachers who helped make this happen.

The 5th graders did a wonderful job with their designs and the art teacher is looking forward to getting more involved next year.

As we continue to tweak the Yearbook Club, Cary and I are working hard to capture candid moments from everyday happenings to Holiday events and assemblies.  Wish us luck!