BELLINGHAM, Washington—Connecting pictures with text is a powerful lesson for beginning readers. At Harmony Elementary School, first-grade teacher Virginia Smith engaged her students in a book-publishing project to help them master reading skills.

The project began with a scavenger hunt. "The class went around our school looking for items that began with each letter of the alphabet," Smith explains. The first-graders borrowed a digital camera from their fifth-grade "buddies." The older students also helped take the photos. Finally, working as a group, Smith's students dictated the text to describe each photo.

The result: a student-published book called The ABC's of Harmony.

For the writing step of the project, students gathered around to watch Smith input their words on the classroom computer. "This was a powerful picture-print connection that they had ownership over," she says.

And once the book was in print, "Students read and re-read it many times," Smith adds. "They still enjoy looking at it."

The only glitch came up when students went looking for an object that started with the letter "U." They were stumped, until a principal came to the rescue. "Our principal has been practicing riding a unicycle to show the concept of how to get better at something, and to encourage student learning," Smith says. Watching their principal try to navigate on the one-wheeler, one of the students made a connection between objects you see with your eye and letters you see on a page. The student yelled out, "Unicycle!" Everyone in the class understood the significance.

Students also learned their own lessons about the value of practice to hone new skills. Smith has created a technology unit for first- and second-graders. She reports, "I'm amazed at how far these students have come since the beginning of the year!"