Writing in the 'Shed": Hook Your Students into Writing Using High-Quality Short Animated Videos

I recently attended the CUE 2015 conference with some Manhattan Beach Unified colleagues. One of our colleagues, Paula Noda, learned some cool writing strategies in her first presentation. In this writing activity, students watch high-quality animated videos and then write dialog and narration in small groups to accompany the video. Students record their dialog on the video to publish. Lisa Nowakowsi's presentation details her process and shows videos and student examples to support several lessons. Her examples are with 5th grade students, but this process could be used for any grade to record dialog for any video or book. Find out more about Lisa on her website.

Rob Smith has an amazing website full of videos organized by theme. Check them out; he even has lesson ideas for many of the videos! Here is one titled Oktapodi also available on YouTube.

Comments

Chromebooks, Cast, Jamboard & Kami: The Fearsome Foursome

Do you remember back in teacher college when the professors taught us that our proximity to misbehaving students would help squash behavior problems? I do. Well, when using our classroom technology, we are typically tethered to our laptop, desktop, document camera, etc... This is a problem, but luckily there may be a solution. Tools You'll Need Google Cast for Education gives students and teachers the ability to share their screens to the classroom projector or interactive display. Cast for Edu Set Up Cast for Edu Support Article Kami is an amazing tool that gives teachers and students the functionality of an interactive board in the palm of their hands. It allows users to a nnotate a doc, slide, pdf, image, etc… Google Jamboard is a whiteboard app that can be accessed online and as an app on your tablet of choice. It's also a very expensive interactive display, but that's not what we're looking at here. Students can create a new Jamboard, share and col

Stop Motion Studio!

Stop Motion Studio is a powerful, easy to use app for creating stop motion movies. Stop motion is a powerful animation technique that makes static objects appear to be moving. There are many types of stop motion techniques such as: hand drawing, cut-paper, sand and claymation. Brainstorm When starting a project like this one it is important to make your ideas clear before you start filming. You should consider what is the “story” you are going to tell. Remember that you only have up to a minute in which to tell this story. Because of this, I recommend that you use simple experiences to create a short story such as the cut-paper example shown in the storyboard below. While this looks simple, it will require many shots. It’s also a good idea to limit yourself to one or two characters. Storyboarding The purpose of the storyboard is to visually plan out the entire animation. Here is where you begin to think about the “camera work” by showing every shot or important tra

Coding for Littles

Sometimes people ask me what I do for a living. And, when they do, I typically tell them I am a technology teacher. Then, I go into detail about how I am a technology coach, who works with multiple school sites and grades K-12. Let me tell you, it's a crowd pleaser and an incredible ice breaker. More times than not, the next question is, "What do you teach kindergartners?" My favorite response is, "Coding?" I it know seems outlandish to think that 5 years olds can learn to code, but it's true. Let's be clear, they aren't typing out extravagant code, while drinking Big Gulps and grubbing on Domino's. But, what they are learning is the foundation of programming. You've got to start somewhere, and it might as well be in the kinder classroom! Here are a few coding apps and sites that you and your students will love. Code.org - Web-based Code.org® is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing

JMarshall Tech

Search This Blog