With the English curriculum at Perry Junior High heavily focused on students improving in the areas of reading, writing, speaking, thinking, and listening, a teacher’s challenge is to find ways for students to enjoy improving their skills in these areas. One way Mrs. Carolyn Buckley did this with her seventh grade English classes this spring was through a creative video project focusing on disabilities. Before the project began, students were introduced to various types of disabilities through fictional characters in various class novels discussed in a Readers Workshop. Reading these novels piqued students’ interest in disabilities and at that point, Mrs. Buckley (shown below working with some of her students) launched the project by asking them to choose a disability they wanted to share with others by creating a short video about it. Next, students began working with Mrs. Mary Pat Connors, Perry’s Library Media Specialist to identify a disability and started to gather facts on it using both print and electronic resources. After notetaking and research, students then wrote a script for their video from the perspective of a news reporter or talk show host. Students were encouraged to include stories they read about people who deal with the disability. Rather than present this in a typical oral presentation and because of the school's classroom set of Flip cameras, the idea of a “digital story” evolved, one created using recorded video along with still photos interwoven into a final movie. To clarify how their story would be told in this manner, they then needed to create a “story map,” which matched the words in their script with images that showed the ideas. Once they had completely planned out their digital story which included facts as well as nonfiction or fictional stories about people with the disability, they were taught how to combine all of these elements together in iMovie. After working in pairs to videotape their full presentation, they then spent several days in the lab creating their videos from their recorded footage as well as integrating titles and images in place of the actual video of themselves reading. The results, which can be seen in this video on Autism as well as this one on Cerebral Palsy were creative, yet very informative, and certainly very interesting. Having gone through the process for the first time this year, Buckley noted the need to schedule a little more time for students to adequately perfect their movies. Also, she realized it would be helpful to introduce some of the skills needed ahead of time such as using images with other nonfiction presentations earlier in the year, giving students earlier exposure and practice in applying this important yet challenging skill needed for digital story creation. When asked what they thought of the project, students enjoyed the project immensely. For example, one student commented “I thought that the iMovie project was challenging to go through the steps. Also I liked it because I learned new things and it was a fun way of “writing” compared to an essay.” Another one stated “It was a lot of fun making a movie. It felt like I was really spreading the word about disabilities. It was beyond words.” From the teacher viewpoint, Buckley enjoyed the project as well. She liked seeing her students work with the cameras, the computers and iMovie to create an interesting project that was educational, informative, and fun. What a great combination for seventh graders in the second half of the year! If you are looking to do an innovative video project with your students, you can as well just by asking the Tech Team. We're already planning for the fall so ask about it today!