For the past 4 years, I’ve collaborated with 2nd grade on a Regions of Georgia center rotation. We usually setup one center for each region of Georgia and the teachers and I lead each region. Over a several days, the students rotate through the stations, and the main goal has been for students to gain more understanding of the regions.
This year we decided to try something new. As a culminating project, students were placed into groups in every classroom and assigned one of the regions of Georgia. The goal was for students to work together to create a commercial advertising their region. They included things like land features, attractions, animal life, plant life, and persuasive reasons to visit their region.
Once scripts were written and a few props were made, students came to the library to record their commercials using the iPads. Our temporary media center has several small rooms attached to it, so 3 groups at a time were able to record their commercials. We used students to do the actual filming as much as possible, although a few student teachers and the classroom teachers did some of the filming.
Since our district decided to open Youtube to both teachers and students, uploading the videos took a matter of seconds rather than the hours it took when we would have to download the videos onto a PC, convert the videos to WMV, and then edit the videos in Movie Maker, and upload to Youtube at home.
Instantly uploading the videos also allowed me to show the next classes what the previous class had done. As they watched videos from their peers, they critiqued them by thinking about what they would congratulate the class on and what they would want to improve about the videos if the groups had a chance to record again. This surfaced a lot of the reminders that I would have given anyway, but it meant more coming from the active thinking of the students.
This was 2nd grade’s first time using the iPads to film. It certainly wasn’t perfect, and there were many logistics that could have been better. However, overall I would call it a success that will hopefully inform the future video projects we do together in 2nd grade.
Take a look at their work below.
Expect the Miraculous 