It was amazing that so many parents could make it out this morning. Our little learners were so excited to show you their LEGO digital stories and walk down the red carpet. They looked great! For all of the photos you can click here.
Your support is so important, and you all made it clear to your children that you are behind them. Thanks so much!
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Today our grade 3 peer mentors joined us again to finish our LEGO movies. They have done a wonderful job in assisting our little learners over the past three days. After each group had put their finishing touches on their digital stories, we all squished together in front of the projector, and watched each child's story come to life. We then provided positive feedback. They were all so proud of their work.
I look forward to having any parents who can make it come to our "film festival" on Tuesday morning at 7:45. For the past two days our first graders, with the help of their grade 3 mentors, have been producing their LEGO movies using the LEGO movie maker app. I first have to say what an amazing job our grade 3 students have done. One of my biggest fears was they they would 'take over', but instead, they have been letting the first graders lead the learning and have been providing assistance along the way.
On our first day together, the grade 3s were paired up with a partner. The grade 1s were expected to read their story to their peer mentor, show their story board, and then "act out" their LEGO story so that their 3rd grade friends could get an idea of their 'vision'. The third grade partners then provided suggestions for improvement. After they had an idea, they were asked to "film" (take stop motion pictures) just the beginning of their stories. For most of them, this was up until the word "suddenly." Then the grade ones could work with support to record their voices, and add sound effects. Of course we were all so excited that we spent some time sharing our beginnings on the projector afterward. Today (our next day), I introduced a few new tricks and ideas to the class, then they set off to work to take photos and add audio/visual effects for the middle of the story, this had to include the problem. Tomorrow we will be finishing our digital stories, by creating the endings, and adding any finishing touches. We will watch them all together during period 3. If all goes well, we hope to have a film festival for parents next week. Today we learned that part of making a movie is creating a background. We discussed how the background for our stories was not a classroom. (Except for Lorena's story that takes place in our class!) We talked about where each story is set, and looked back at clips from The LEGO Movie, to see what a good set looked like. After that students set to work, drawing what the setting of their story looks like, and also building any props that they would need for their LEGO digital stories (houses, boats, spaceships, and airplanes). I am so proud of our little learner's effort and creativity with this project. Today we learned that there are many aspects to digital storytelling. Students were asked to think about the pictures, music, and narration that they were going to include in their own LEGO movie. There are many benefits to digital stories. Through the creation of these stories students need to take ownership of their stories that they are presenting. They have to analyze and synthesize information as well. This requires a great deal of higher level thinking. This process gives students a voice to express their own thoughts and ideas. "When students are able participate in the multiple steps of designing, creating and presenting their own digital stories, they can build several literacy skills. These include the following: Research skills by finding and analyzing information when documenting the story, writing skills when developing a script, and organization skills by managing the scope of the project within a time constraint. Technology skills can be gained through learning to use a variety of tools, such as digital cameras and multimedia authoring software and presentation skills through the presentation of the story to an audience. Students also gain interview, interpersonal, problem-solving and assessment skills through completing their digital story and learning to receive and give constructive criticism." (Wikipedia). Today, students worked on storyboarding. This required them to think and synthesize their story, and decide what the most important parts were from the beginning, middle and end of their stories. We learned how real film makers use storyboards, and we drew pictures to show what we want our scenes to look like. We also wrote a description, dialogue, or anything we thought was important for our grade 3 peer mentors to know about our story. It was neat to see all of the ways that we need to transfer our knowledge in the process. This is an amazing way for our students to practice synaesthesis. Digital literacy research shows that there are "clear benefits in establishing a peer support network to allow them to meet others from different...years. The peer support role was valued as a way of sharing...academic practices including useful tools and apps for study" (Bell & Secker, 2014, p. 317).
Taking this research in, I consulted the third grade class, and asked them to be peer mentors, and work in pairs to help our little learners transfer their knowledge from written stories to digital stories. I went in and provided some overt instruction, and then let the students inquire, and play with the app to figure out all of it's features before they come to our class to help us. There were plenty of reminders that they were there to help and mentor, not take over. That it was a grade 1s story, not theirs. I think by letting them use the app, and play around, they got all of the excitement out of their systems. I look forward to their support in our classroom. "Digital storytelling" is a relatively new term which describes the new practice of ordinary people who use digital tools to tell their 'story'. Digital stories often present in compelling and emotionally engaging formats, and can be interactive.
The term "digital storytelling" can also cover a range of digital narratives (web-based stories, interactive stories, hypertexts, and narrative computer games); It is sometimes used to refer to film-making in general, and as of late, it has been used to describe advertising and promotion efforts by commercial and non-profit enterprises." (Wikipedia) Before learning about digital storytelling, we watched the LEGO movie. We focused on the narration, subtitles, pictures, and music that made the movie appealing. Students were told that they would be producing their own LEGO movies, and to focus on how the story was told in the movie. We paused and appreciated many of the different aspects of the film, and talked about how we would be able to incorporate them when we transferred our written stories into digital stories.. |
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