Collaborative Approaches to Critiquing and Finalizing the Yearbook

The yearbook is nearing the end of its production. Many eyes are critiquing it to find ways to improve and catch mistakes. The most productive way to accomplish this goal is to offer multiple levels of collaboration. A group vetting method,  called critiquing, uses subjectivity and objectivity. This creates the space between the work and the students. The criteria provided by you, the adviser, provide the objectivity. 

The criteria explain the standards for yearbook theme and appearance, the color palette and font expressed in the Style Guide, and the narrative the students are attempting to tell. The assignments you create provide the outline. Through practice, the staff learns to accept objectivity as the method to present the yearbook to the community. 

Highlight certain aspects of the yearbook narrative to draw out the staff's creative development. You want to move them from skill to skill as they write, photograph, use their layout and design to tie their theme together. Critique is a natural part of the process.

A style of critique called "all alone together" is a method of observing and analyzing everyone's work individually. Students learn how to speak about someone else's work and how to accept what others say about their own. You provide the guidelines/criteria for discussion. Flip through complete page spreads and discuss them. Reflect on the work to find ways to improve. Ask, "What do you think?" "What is the story in this section?" "Where and how is the story expressed?" Let the students tell the story in their spreads. Once the critique takes place, they go back and improve their work.

One key to making this work is to print out the completed page spreads so students make notes on the pages. Physical copies provide permanence compared to the temporary quality of screens. The copies also help when searching for narrative and alignment problems and duplications. Assign staff to look over a particular page to make the corrections.

Enlist a few staff members to be your core edit group. This gives them extra responsibility to manage. If you increase the number of pages for them to edit, you may need to reduce the number of spreads they create. If it is close to the deadline, make an explicit agreement with the class that the editor will automatically make changes to the spread if needed.

Some of your students become anxious about their grades and try to make the book as perfect as possible. As an adviser, you must walk a tightrope to know when you need to intervene and when you need to let them be hands-on.

By the time you reach the end, the pressure to be as perfect as possible becomes a heavy weight. The expectations of the parents, the administration, even the school district to market and sell the yearbooks, adds to the desire advisers have to not disappoint the students. Finally, you have to take deep breaths and congratulate yourself for what has been completed. Celebrate the fact that your staff has done the work and finished the book.

Your students learn to see what they create in a whole new light. The process of collaborative critique and learning to match their creations to the goals and guidelines they set for the yearbook are skills that will be profitable for the job market. Their self-confidence increases and they continue to learn how to work as a team. You can see that the deadline is close and you are prepared!

We understand that collaboration during this time of year is vital! We’re here for you throughout this final push. Our website, www.unitedyearbook.net , and our newsletter, podcast, and blog, are tools available to you as you move forward to complete the book. Schedule your yearbook 1-on-1 consult here.

Copyright © 2025. TSE Worldwide Press. All Rights Reserved.

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Contributor: Lucy McHugh comes to United Yearbook Printing from a 39-year career in public and private school education. She was a former visual art teacher and yearbook adviser. She received a Bachelors of Science in Art from Columbia College in Columbia, SC, a Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Nebraska in 2000, and in 2014 earned a Certificate in Catholic School Leadership from Loyola Marymount University. Lucy enjoys her family, making art and gardening.

Editor: Donna Ladner obtained a B.A. in Education and a minor in English from California Baptist University, and a M.S. in ESL from USC, Los Angeles. After she married Daniel, their family moved to Indonesia with a non-profit organization and lived cross-culturally for 15 years before returning to the U.S in 2012. Donna has been working as an editor and proofreader for TSE Worldwide Press and its subsidiary, United Yearbook since 2015.