iMovie Projects

I know I have discussed using iMovie before, but I wanted to throw it out there again. iMovie is a great program that we have on our MacBook computers. It is a quick and easy way for kids to present information they have learned. It is also a good way to hold them accountable for knowing information if they are recording their voice explaining the content. This program is also a positive motivator for some students if they know their completed movies might be published on the class blog! Today, I was at Johnson Elementary with the third graders. They have been learning the water cycle, and to end the unit, we are making Water Cycle iMovies. The first two classes I visited, we weren’t able to finish, so you can imagine my surprise in the last class when Miles, in Mrs. Starkweather’s class, proclaimed he was finished with 5 minutes left in our hour time block. It was amazing to see how quick he was able to catch on to the process and complete his first iMovie Project. Great Job, Miles!

If you would like your class to make their own iMovies, email me and sign up for a time for me to come in!

1st Grade Patriotic iMovies

Ms. Harrell’s 1st grade class at Carver has been learning about patriotic symbols. The four main symbols they are learning about are the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument, the American Flag, and the Bald Eagle. Ms. Harrell wanted to spice up her unit, so I suggested we have each student make an iMovie.  This program is so easy to use, and I was really excited to try this with 1st graders!

 

 

I used the Wikimedia Commons Website and found copyright free pictures of the symbols for us to use. Using iMovie, the students dropped in the pictures, made their title page and ending page, and added the copyright free music from Free Play Music that I had downloaded for them.  The students had a blast seeing the quick movie they had created about the Patriotic Symbols.  Next week, we will go back and record our voices to tell a fact about each symbol to add to the movie.  Until next week, here is Daniel’s iMovie he made.

Feel free to sign up for a lesson with me to come in and teach your students how they can make movies based on the content you are teaching as well!

UPDATE! We have now learned how to put our recorded voices into our movies! Here’s Braeden’s movie:

 

Common Craft – It’s about the Message

Common Craft Videos are a great way to teach or explain a topic in a simple visual way. The people at CommonCraft.com have done a great job of creating a multitude of videos that explain all sorts of topics from blogs to wikis and more. I love this quote talking about the common craft videos from the Common Craft Blog post A Call to Action – Become a Explanation Specialist by Lee LeFever: “This is not about making videos. It’s about making ideas easier to understand in any medium.” This is totally true! Making the videos are fun, and I’ve always thought it would be a great activity to do with my students.  However, in the long run, what is being conveyed in the video is the most important because hopefully, the viewer will get more out of it than the traditional way of explaining a topic.

One of my colleagues, Whitney deBordenave, and I are working on a section of an Internet Safety Blog page our county is making. We needed to come up with an engaging and easy to understand video for students explaining how to evaluate whether a website is acceptable and credible. Whitney has previously made an awesome common craft style video explaining story elements, so I knew, with her experience, we could pull it off.  It took a lot more work than I thought it would, but making a 4 minute video in common craft style needs a lot of “props.” I had a great time making this video.  That being said, in the end, I hope it’s the message that stands out for the students, so they can easily apply the information that is being taught.  I can’t wait to take what I have learned and have students make their own based on the content they are learning in the classroom!

VA Museum of Fine Arts Field Trip

We had a blast on our field trip to the VA Museum of Fine Arts this week. We were able to see all different types of Ancient Greek, Roman, and African Art. It was really fun watching the students get excited about seeing art that is over 2,000 years old. Check out some of the things we saw!

Matter Movie

Hello, my class and I are learning about matter.  There are three states of matter: solid, liqiuld, and gas.  I made a iMovie about it.  Hope you enjoy it!

Matter iMovie

We are learning about matter in class so I made a imovie about it. My favorite phase of matter is a solid. I even put in a picture of an experiment that we did at school.I think it is pretty cool. I hope you enjoy it!

Iceman and his States of Matter

Mrs. Newton came up with an awesome idea to visually watch an Iceman melt in class for an entire day. She filled up three large balloons with water and froze them. Once frozen, we pealed the balloons off the ice balls, set the Iceman up inside a bucket, and decorated him! The students were able to watch the changes in matter over a long period of time. It was a great visual representation of how a solid changes into a liquid. Our Iceman didn’t fully melt until the middle of the night! How long do you think it will take to evaporate??

It took around 24 hours for our Iceman to fully melt, and since we weren’t able to stay at school and watch him for that long, I set up the iPad in Mrs. Newton’s room and used the TimeLapse App to take a picture every 15 seconds from 7:00am Monday to 7:00am Tuesday. I sped up the final version to condense the video from around 5 minutes to a little over a minute.

Moon Cycle iMovie

This is an i-Movie I made. It’s about the moon cycle. There are 6 phases of the moon. We have been learning about different cycles. My 2 favorite phases of the moon are the full moon and the new moon. Hope you like the video!

Water Cycle iMovie

This video is about the water cycle. If we didn’t have the sun there would be no water cycle and not as much water as we need! This video might teach you a little bit about the water cycle.

Water Cycle Keynote/iMovie

We are learning about the water cycle in our class!  My teacher, Mr.Hart, assigned us this project.  This Keynote/iMovie is about the water cycle.  It shows a lot of things about the water cycle.  It has a little rap by J.A.C. called “The Water Cycle Jump.”  It is from Bill Nye the Science Guy.  It also shows pictures with information and a lot of cool features like 3.D. flip and color planes.  Enjoy my Keynote/iMovie.