Turned on to Tech: 3rd Annual Third Grade Explorer Movies

I know it is the end of the school year when I'm posting the videos created by my third grade students about European explorers. The first year I facilitated this project, students created their movies utilizing clay animation. Last year, the students exercised their 'acting chops'. This year, students created puppet shows. Puppets and sets were painted in art with Mrs. Rowe while planning the storyboard, filming the puppet show, and editing the movies in iMovie took place in the computer lab. Script writing took place in the individual classrooms.

The puppet shows were really adorable but filming presented some interesting challenges. Learning how to keep hands and heads out of the frames along with figuring out how to position the puppets so that they were always facing forward was hard. I think making larger puppets might help solve some of these issues. I'll also have to figure out a different way to make the sets so that the puppets are closer to the scenes and a bit more sturdy. The tri-folds boards weren't as stable as I had hoped.

Mrs. Hensler's Class
Hernan Cortes by Carson, Jay, and Shaherzad