I have been on a hunt for online animations to use in Literacy teaching and have come across some fantastic ones. They are all available on YouTube and sometimes on other hosting sites as well. The easiest way to use the animations is to download them.
Oktapodi directed by Julien Bocabeille and Francois-Xavier Chanioux made me laugh out loud. It reminds me of Finding Nemo. See it here and if you can’t access YouTube try here.
I am becoming a little obsessed with animations made using sticky notes. Yellow Sticky Notes by Jeff Chiba Stearn is wonderful. Thi s would be a more interesting outcome for the Yr6 unit on biography and autobiography.
To see all the animations that I am collecting go to our YouTube channel and subscribe so that you are notified when new video is added.
As an authority we are taking part in an animation and poetry project entitled Persistence of Vision. Through a group of schools, consultants, animators and academic mentors we are working together to create a framework of progression in animation that can be used by all primary schools.
One of the issues that we are exploring is what impact does watching animations have on children’s own animations. We watched Laughing Moon from the BFI Starting Stories and Love on the Wing from Story Shorts 2. These two animations were chosen becuase of the links that they had to the poetry units in Yr 2 – Patterns on the Page (Laughing Moon) and the use of imagery in Yrs5 and 6 (Love on the Wing).
Learning and Teaching Scotland has some interesting ideas for creating animations in powerpoint that follow on from Laughing Moon. And this idea using sticky post-its is fantastic for playing around with patterns! This video, Trade Tatoo, from the GPO film unit is yet another great way of using patterns.
Below are the animations created by the teachers working in pairs.
So much has been happening recently that I thought I would highlight some of the best resources that have been shared with me recently.
The first idea is from a school that is looking at writing instructions. We decided to cook (and write) like Jamie Oliver and so looked for video clips that could be shown in school. Here the Sainsbury’s advert for fishcakes gives a taste of what he is like. When you read Jamie’s recipes it is the verb choice that really stands out. Verbs that you might expect to find are cut, chop, slice, mix and pour. What you find is something a little different, e.g. pile up, tear, chuck in, smear and glug. These were in the Jamie Oliver in Italy. For other recipes look here. I like the introduction to each recipe. These make a great model for children to use. I’m looking forward to cooking in the style of Jamie!
Stories of the Dreaming is a wonderful Australian storytelling site. After each video is a transcript of the story and a commenting section. This would be a great way to introduce children to australian storytelling and commenting on sites. Well worth a visit.
And finally, a word game to use with KS2. DeepLeap the fast-paced time wasting word game. The letters look like scrabble and children can call out the words they can see for you or another child to type in. Let us know what your highest score is. The Devon Primary ScITT trainees achieved 785.
This has to be one of the best resources that I have come across recently. Many thanks to Tim Brook for sharing on his blog Magic Lantern Movies. A widget that allows others to upload film clips and then remix all the clips. This would be a great activity for pupils to do over the holidays, bearing in mind e-safety issues. Instead of writing the ever present ‘What I did in the Summer Holidays’ on the first day back, the class could make a video of what they did. Let’s have a go! Upload a short video clip of somewhere that you visited or have visited previously during the summer and then edit and remix the clips. Want one of these yourself? Then go to Kaltura Open Source Video and sign up. Linked posts: What else can I have on my blog?
I love the way it uses still images to show what you need and that these are are inside the film rather than as a list at the beginning. The music gives it a jaunty, easy to do rather comic feel and the end product is just so good!
This is a fairly dark story about what happens when we destroy nature. As the buildings and ‘others’ take over the text becomes harder and harder to read – just as it becomes harder to hear in the story. This is an interesting book telling a story that is occurring more and more frequently in children’s fiction. The trailer for the film of the book that Marc Craste has made with STUDIOaka is excellent.
Definitely one to listen to without the images first to see what sort of story it suggests. The camera angles are interesting and worth exploring.
What I find most disturbing is that although nature seems to win through at the end it doesn’t really because the wild area is created in a glass dome rather than being a true ‘outside’ space. The book reminds me of The Paradise Garden by Colin Thompson where the boy escapes the noise by visiting and staying in the park – or that is one reading of the story. It also has some links with The Rabbits by john Marsden, illustrated by Shaun Tan who by the way would make a great author/illustrator study.
Other things worth exploring in the book are the use of light and dark and the use of anthropomorphism.
A wonderful trailer for use in literacy. How soon before you know whether the thing carrying him is friendly or not? What are the clues? What effect does looking up at the tree canopy give? How would you describe that opening in writing? From whose point of vew?
Children could capture an image of the text and put it into Photostory or MovieMaker and add their own images to show what they hope for, fear, consider to be an adventure and how they are a wild thing.
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and Safe From Harm by Rollo Armstrong make a great pair of books to use in guided readingto compare and contrast.
Read this postto find out how to download from YouTube to take a film into the classroom.
What a wonderful event and what a wonderful idea. Thanks @AngelaStockman for sharing it. Make a video of three words that sum up your experience. Here are the films from the Special Olympics. I am amazed at the number of different ways they found to share those words.
We could use this to summarise just about anything: a special event, learning, how we feel, what we are looking forward to, our favourite book, what we like about writing. in fact the list is endless. Having just finished a project about guided writing this would have made a wonderful starting point and end point to see if attitudes towards writing have changed. You could even use it to tell a story about yourself with a carefully chosen image.
For some time now we have used film to support writing. Here we use a Scooby Doo trailer to explore how focusing on different aspects of a film changes the writing.
We always turn the sound down on this trailer and stop it before the Batman outline turns into Scooby Doo. The children need to watch it several times just to respond to it as it is, no sound and no Scooby Doo as that completely changes the film. We would show them it all after we have finished.
Divide the children into groups and ask each group to focus on a different aspect: camera angle and movement, light and dark and colour. The children watch the trailer several times and m ake notes about what they see and then discuss. Share what they see.
They then watch again but jot down words and phrases that link to their focus and the film. The camera group often come up with things such as swooping up and over, racing along, gliding down the corridor, turning and choosing the doorway. Here the verb choice to describe the movement and prepositions are very strong.
The light and dark group might jot down phrases such as moonlight shining on water, lit up house, shadows of trees, light entering the gloom from the moonlit windows, patterned shadows. Here noun modifiction and expansion are strong.
These can then be crafted into sentences to describe the film clip. Depending upon the focus for observation, the paragraphs will be very different and that can then lead into a discussion about what you as a writer want your reader to see and feel.
There is also something interesting about the fact that whatever is moving around the house is hidden from the viewer and with older children it would be worthwhile exploring how you hide something from the reader and then decide to reveal it. The revealing in this clip leads to humour and completely changes the tone. Different ways of revealing could be explored in writing and the impact upon the reader.
Do you have any film clips you like to use to support children in writing?
Teaching children how to search the internet is a skill that all need. The great wealth of information means that is a necessity. This video is a brilliant way of introducing searching to KS2 children to ensure that are effective from Lee Lefever at Commoncraft.
If you are looking for models of explanations to share with children, then Lee’s films fit the bill. Write your next explanation on film.
And now from Google, a great serach engine, KidRex, that has been designed for children that has Google SafeSearch behind it to filter inappropriate sites. Give it a go!
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Posted by alijoy
