I really enjoyed the open-ended making project this week and it taught me many lessons as a teacher. As a previous 4th grade teacher, I presented most projects with a well thought out plan. Having 14 years experience teaching this grade I have an entire collection of exemplars from myself or former students. There is nothing better than showing a piece of art (writing sample, project, math representation) from a former student or from myself to inspire students. In many ways, I feel like a new teacher this year in my new role. Last week my students began making their claymation stop motion videos. They struggled a bit during the planning sessions but then got into the groove this week when they began to build and create. I think there were a couple reasons why they struggled: lack of insulating dough and experience planning on a storyboard but the main reason was my prompt may have been too limiting.
The 6th graders have done stop motion videos before in 4th grade and in 5th grade. So I thought I would up the ante a bit. I asked them to try to incorporate a circuit and to think about one of the Literary Essays they read in ELA. I required them to create a short video that reflects the essay´s theme. It was at that moment that I lost some students. I found myself scrambling to read a few of the essays and then had to sit down with a few of the students in each class to have them prepare a storyboard that fit my prompt. With this restricted focus, I was pleased that many students challenged themselves and that many videos were thought provoking and meaningful. Many students are now planning to post the video on their online portfolios for ELA. I was, however, aware that this narrow focus limited creativity. I certainly realized this when I created my video this week. My video is pretty rough and if the prompt were more open ended I would have gone in my different directions. What a great lesson for a teacher to explore the project that was assigned. I need to do more projects myself! Not only to provide students with an exemplar but also to feel the process. I will certainly be mindful of this with future projects.
I am thinking about using these stop motion/squishy circuits lessons for a piece of my culminating making project. I am thinking of other ways to incorporate squishy circuits into our K-6 curriculum. On to more research….
