Many of my blog posts have focused on the importance of using a variety of media and activities in order to engage students in developing literacy skills. In the past few weeks, we have been able to put those ideas into practice. Myself and another pre-service teacher helped the early readers we have been working with this semester make a movie.
The students we have been working with are kindergartners. Each has a very different personality. One is very eager and talkative, but likes to focus on exactly how characters are portrayed in books or movies. The other student is very shy and needs much encouragement to participate. Knowing that, we went to their kindergarten class with picture books and art supplies, ready to engage the students in telling us about what interests them. Myself and the other pre-service teacher told them that we were going to help them make a movie about anything they wanted! This turned out to be an overwhelming offer and both students told us they did not have any ideas. This is when relying on popular media came in handy.
We immediately asked about movies the students had recently seen. Had they seen anything they really liked? Would movies they like be fun to recreate here? With some careful questioning we were able to find out that our more talkative student had recently seen a movie about dinosaurs he called Meet the Dinosaurs. He told us it was a very new movie, still in theaters, and that it was okay that we hadn't heard of it. I did some investigating on the internet and found a 1999 made-for-TV movie called Meet the Dinosaurs, but I also found out that there is a Discover the Dinosaurs show happening in Indianapolis in addition to The Children's Museum's dinosaurs attractions. Wherever the interest came from, we had an enthusiastic dinosaur expert. As we suspected, our shier student was happy to go along with this suggestion.
To make the movie, we gave the students the options to be the dinosaurs themselves or to make dinosaurs for their movie. They opted to make dinosaurs and we provided our two students with paper and drawing materials in order to create the characters. With our dinosaur enthusiast explaining who the main characters were in the movie, we helped create a background and the start of dinosaur shapes. Our movie was a work in progress from start to finish. We filmed a few scenes when the students decided we needed to create two more dinosaurs, so it was back to the art supplies before we shot more footage.
Working with the kindergartners to make a movie taught me to be open-minded to whatever topic they were interested in and also to however they wanted to make their movie. The students we worked with did not have any interest in planning a story out ahead of time. The student who had seen the dinosaur movie usually started the scene wanting to replicate something he'd seen in the movie, but usually switched to playing a dinosaur who just ate everything. I enjoyed letting the students decide what made sense to do next while facilitating an end product.
The students we have been working with are kindergartners. Each has a very different personality. One is very eager and talkative, but likes to focus on exactly how characters are portrayed in books or movies. The other student is very shy and needs much encouragement to participate. Knowing that, we went to their kindergarten class with picture books and art supplies, ready to engage the students in telling us about what interests them. Myself and the other pre-service teacher told them that we were going to help them make a movie about anything they wanted! This turned out to be an overwhelming offer and both students told us they did not have any ideas. This is when relying on popular media came in handy.
We immediately asked about movies the students had recently seen. Had they seen anything they really liked? Would movies they like be fun to recreate here? With some careful questioning we were able to find out that our more talkative student had recently seen a movie about dinosaurs he called Meet the Dinosaurs. He told us it was a very new movie, still in theaters, and that it was okay that we hadn't heard of it. I did some investigating on the internet and found a 1999 made-for-TV movie called Meet the Dinosaurs, but I also found out that there is a Discover the Dinosaurs show happening in Indianapolis in addition to The Children's Museum's dinosaurs attractions. Wherever the interest came from, we had an enthusiastic dinosaur expert. As we suspected, our shier student was happy to go along with this suggestion.
To make the movie, we gave the students the options to be the dinosaurs themselves or to make dinosaurs for their movie. They opted to make dinosaurs and we provided our two students with paper and drawing materials in order to create the characters. With our dinosaur enthusiast explaining who the main characters were in the movie, we helped create a background and the start of dinosaur shapes. Our movie was a work in progress from start to finish. We filmed a few scenes when the students decided we needed to create two more dinosaurs, so it was back to the art supplies before we shot more footage.
Working with the kindergartners to make a movie taught me to be open-minded to whatever topic they were interested in and also to however they wanted to make their movie. The students we worked with did not have any interest in planning a story out ahead of time. The student who had seen the dinosaur movie usually started the scene wanting to replicate something he'd seen in the movie, but usually switched to playing a dinosaur who just ate everything. I enjoyed letting the students decide what made sense to do next while facilitating an end product.
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