iMovie Role Play

Our school just got iMove on 5 of our 20 iPads. The Grade 5-6 class made some really cool trailers on them and I was green with envy.

After kicking the idea around for a little while, I decided to try it out with my class.

The video evolved several times from when I first thought of it. At first I was going to use puppets to make a video of the kids themselves. But I decided against that when I saw how much time it would take them and how much time I would have to leave the rest of the class alone.

Then I decided to do a general movie trailer for our class. A kind of introduction for the world. I also wanted to see if iMovie was something that we will be able to use this year.

I am happy to say that it was better than I had expected.

I am not that happy with the final product, but I am happy with what the students showed they could do, and with a few things I figured out.

The project started out by brainstorming words that describe us. As with the class needs/rules, there was a lot more steering. That will happen a lot this year with this group of grade 1-2's.

The kids did come up with some impressive words though. We had teamwork, thinking, helping, our ESLRs, and some others I can't remember. (This is becoming a problem as I have used an iPad for photo "note-taking" and then I don't remember which iPad I used. One more reason for me to get one for myself.)

I also saw how having the kids act out vocabulary words is a great way for them to show the meaning. It was amazing that the students used the ESLRs in the brainstorming session, but could not give very good examples of what they were. Role playing allowed me [or will allow me] to grab their attention because they were so into the movie.

I can't wait to have them make their own movies. I would love them to create trailers for books.

I hope iMove will be OK on Monday and let me upload the movie to Youtube.