Day 6: Stop Motion Animation

Day six was entirely a work day for the stop motion animation videos. Everyone wrapped up their scenery and script and started creating their videos.

Of course, the two boys, who had not wanted a long script had a very short video and were the first ones done. Directing and helping them on their project was slightly complicated because one boy was much more willing to keep working and follow directions than the other and he began to get frustrated at his own partner.

By now I had begun listing alternative projects on the board every day so when someone was finished or started goofing around I could point to the board and say “which project do you want to work on next?”. This worked with some success.

I recently read a blog post from a colleague about an activity jar in the art room. When a student is finished or not interested in the current project, they can draw a variety of art activities from the draw and then choose which one they want to do. I wish I had known about that before and had an art activity jar ready to go for the students who only dutifully completed their projects so they could then distract others and be social.

But once again, the circumstances of the classroom not being an art room and not being stocked with any supplies except the ones I needed for my lessons, would have woefully limited the options of any activity jar.

We also ran into technical difficulties with sound and the software. I had downloaded demo versions (because couldn’t afford a school license), which my group of three girls quickly found only allowed them to take 50 frames. They had planned a long video, so the work around became to create as many small videos as they needed to complete their movie and I would help them put them all together when they were done. They ended up creating 7 (!!!) videos of 50 frames and their entire movie ended up being 3 times longer than the group with the next longest video. They were so invested in their video that they worked really hard over the next three days to complete it and recorded a lot of their audio during class breaks.

Overall, this work day went very well. All the students were very engaged and enjoyed working on their videos. They were really proud of what they created and I was proud of them!

Here are their final videos!