Day 3 - the movies come together

Here are Ben and Caitlyn teaching my students the use of camera phones.




It's Day Three and the students are in constant motion. They are taking "B" footage of the building and all around. I learned that this means "background" footage. Then, there are these action shots. Maestra throws the ball. Maestra discusses healthy foods in Spanish. Maestra is flying across the room with a red cape to help a student with the imperfect and the preterit. "Super Maestra!", as they called me, is at it again! It's hysterical to see what kids of ideas the kids come up with.


Today, they were still filming, but they ended the session learning the basics of video editing. Tomorrow and Friday, we wrap it all up.

In the end, there will be many movies that are 2 minutes and 30 seconds long and then there will be one which will be shown at the NEA Foundation's Annual Salute to Excellence in Education Gala in February.





I would love to have all of the movies, to treasure each shot and angle. How cool is it to have students make a movie about what THEY think is important about you and the class?

Maybe we should all have such an opportunity. It's Reflection with a capital "R" because we get to see how what we do every single day reflects back on us from a student perspective. Maybe I will make up a project that is similar and do it every year.

I would ask the kids questions like:

"What do I do that you like?"
"What learning engages you?"
"What types of things that we do are fun?"
"What would you rather I skip?"
"What do you remember from a month ago?"
"What do you think you will always remember?"

Those are MY questions, but I'm not the one who gets to fashion the questions for this student-driven video. I won't even know what the finished product looks like until it's all done - it's in their hands.

Here are a few photographic highlights from Day 3. Enjoy!

Here, the kids are filming students as they talk about what it's like to be my student!




"O.K., we have these story boards, footage and notes. How can we bring this together to make a film?"



"Let's take a breather for a moment and smile."



This group is happy about their work!