I have the pleasure to work with an engaged and excited group of students! My students love to work together, collaborate, write, and record voiceovers to create a cut paper animated movie from a screenplay we wrote from our favorite class novel.
I teach a very sweet, caring, hardworking, creative, and excitable group of 25 third grade students in sunny Los Angeles.
Over 32% of the students at our school qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and everyone receives free breakfast daily. Our school believes in integrating the arts into our academic lessons because we feel this taps into all the students' interests. My students speak English at school, and many speak Spanish, Tagalog, or another language at home. We are a wonderful mix of cultures, and we support each other as we grow and learn together.
My Project
This year my students worked on a long-term project of transforming a great novel, Poppy, by Avi into a cut paper animated movie. It was a great thrill watching my students collaborate on selecting key scenes from the novel and writing a screenplay. They auditioned for the voice over roles and every student used their best dramatic voice during the recording of the voice overs with GarageBand. Then my students learned how to edit the voice overs by selecting the best "takes" and editing any mistakes.
My students drew animals, houses, a water scene, and the epic battle scene between the evil Mr. Ocax and the heroine, Poppy.
Then I set up three tripods and cameras/iPads in the classroom and my students recorded the scenes for the movie - one click at a time. Finally the audio was mixed with the animated films and we created a movie.
I have requested replacement paper, pencils, erasers, card stock and poster board so next year's students can work on an in-depth project like this. Your help donating to this project means that my students will have the materials and resources to get as creative as possible!
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