Educator Resources

If you want to incorporate Illustrated Memoir work into your ELL classroom some of the resources on this page can help. The most important elements of this project are time and respect. Telling our stories can’t be rushed. And we as educators should not impose our ideas of what a story looks like or sounds like on students. Everyone has a different story to tell and their own unique way of telling it. Please respect your students’ choices and support them in however they choose to share their experience and knowledge of the world.

Storyboard Template

The storyboard takes a story from a single written document to a plan for a book. It is a big conceptual step. Once a story is written it can be divided up into sections that seem like they should live on a page together. Number these sections, then layout those written sections with sketches for planned illustrations. The completed storyboard is your map for the work ahead and a guide for assembling the completed memoir.

Examples of illustrations from different countries

I have put together some slide shows you can use showing examples of work by artists from diverse cultures and countries. I think these can help give students some ideas about various approaches to take when starting to create images for books.

Examples of Collage

Sometimes memoir project participants will want to use existing images in their illustrations in the form of photographs or images from magazines. When that is the case I encourage them to consider making the image their own by incorporating it into a collage. The slideshow linked shows a variety of examples.

Zines: An Approachable Way for You to Incorporate Illustrated Memoir in Your Classroom

In 2024 we began integrating the Illustrated Memoir project into English Language Learner classroom curricula. This has gone swimmingly. We are working with many more participants each year and the teachers we have co-taught with love the project and the results they are seeing with their students. but we can’t be in every classroom and the time and money involved in making books for all of your students can be quite daunting.

We have found that zines are a great way for individual teachers to incorporate illustrated memoir work into their classrooms. Zines allow students to still write and illustrate true stories from their lives, but in a format that teachers can easily help assemble and replicate. And students can later go on to make additional zines on their own once they understand the process. Below I will share templates for both 8-page zines as well as 16-page zines. There is also a short video that demonstrates how to fold both sizes of zines.

In addition to the templates you should find storyboard templates that allow students to plan out their work.

Whatever size zine you go with, each panel is 2 3/4” x 4 1/4'“. I recommend you cut a large quantity of watercolor paper to this size that students can use to create their illustrations. Watercolor paper can be used for pencil, ink, marker, colored pencil, or paint. You will want them to use the panels in their taller aspect, with the 4 1/4” being the height and 2 3/4” being the width so that each drawing will fit properly in a panel.

For the written portion, students can either hand write on those same pieces of paper, or you can make text boxes of those same dimensions in a word doc and copy and paste and print their writing then cut and place it in the template.

Once all of the panels are placed in order on the template they can be glued in place with a glue stick and run on a color copier.

If you have questions or concerns about implementing this work please feel free to email me at ktccurrie@gmail.com and I will do everything I can to help.