First+District+Drama+-+Fall+2011

Please keep this information up-to-date.
**Teaching Artist:** Box Of Light (Rand Whipple, Lethan Candlish)

**Art Specialist:** Cory Wilkerson

**Core Group Teachers (A teaching artist may work with up to 3 "core" teachers.):** Missy Vogt, Kindergarten, Diana Hotchkiss, Sixth Grade

**Non-Core Group Teachers:** **(__If time permits__, the teaching artist may work with other teachers in the building.)** Lyn Geiger, Kindergarten

**Planning Date(s) (To be facilitated by an Art Specialist):** 10/17/2011

**Date(s) when Teaching Artist observes the school culture and classrooms:** 10/18/2011

**Residency Dates:** 10/18-11/18/2011

**Reflection Date (To be facilitated by an Art Specialist at the end of the residency):** ** 12-15-2011 **

**Documentation (Please add your video, photo & other documentation here):** [|Hotchkiss Residency Planning Guide]

[|Ms. Hotchkins Final Reflection Form] __**Artist Reflection**__ Here we go. We are finally ready to load films to our wiki. Not sure, exactly, what written documentation/explanation is looked for here but it makes sense to put these films into some context. Rand and Lethan had a great residency at First District, working with Melissa Vogt (Kindergarten), Lyn Geiger (Kindergarten) and Diana Hotchkiss (6th grade). We worked with video and stop action animation in all classes. The films below and many others not shown, will be burned to DVD's for the First District teachers. They will also reside on the classroom computers. The Kindergarten videos are being put into Powerpoint presentations that will be loaded onto the classrooms computer so that the kids can work on number and letter recognition as they watch themselves on screen. We think it's great that the kids are seeing their own faces, friends and classroom in the films and software rather than commercial characters with product tie ins.


 * IN THE KINDERGARTEN**, we created videos with the children that on worked letter and number recognition as well as vocabulary and counting. We did a good bit of storytelling in the classrooms and worked on the concept of character and the idea that stories have a beginning, middle and end. Our largest film with the kindergarteners. Wild Things, was a version of Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are. This film used both kindergarten classes and included probably about half of the other First District classes as well. In our version of the story, Max is a kindergarten student, having a bad day at school. Because of the number of students in the film, we need to get permission to load the entire film to this wiki. What is linked below is a brief cutting (the entire film is about 8 minutes) that just uses our core students. We'll load the entire film if/when we receive permission to do so.

media type="youtube" key="5lIo6vpK3oU" height="315" width="560"
 * Wild Things clip** (Entire movie is 8 minutes long.)

We took large rolls of paper and created the island covering Missy's whiteboard. We then cut away pieces of the island as we recorded our stop action clips. What you see here is the movie in reverse. We ran the movie as we recorded it when Max is waking up in the video and the island is disappearing. media type="youtube" key="Z3UgqQID1YY" height="315" width="560"
 * Stop Action clip**: the transformation of Max's classroom to the island of Wild Things

media type="youtube" key="oRSABRWCZIE" height="315" width="560"
 * Kinder Counting** : We used a gross motor activity to create this simple math video. Lethan edited the clips and added the sound effects.

Knowing that kids will watch films of themselves endlessly, we created an ABC video so that, every time the children watched themselves, they got a run through the alphabet. media type="youtube" key="6V5EmIxXk00" height="315" width="560"
 * Ms. Vogt's Class presents the ABC's**

I think that the major task in using film in a kindergarten or early learning classroom is to shape their 'acting' assignments into learning activities themselves. The kids are too young to act a scene or repeat a shot until it looks right. If you say, "Now, we are going to walk over to the door...", they will be on their way before you get a chance to say 'as soon as I say 'go'. You need to have the camera running before you give them directions.
 * THOUGHTS ON THE USE OF FILM IN KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOMS**

I think the power of using video in a kindergarten classroom has to do with using the child's image rather than a purchased character. Kids this age love to see themselves on camera. It's not conceit. It makes them happy. We adults find flaws in what we look like or how we sound. Kindergarteners don't. If, with their image, comes a lesson, the child will re-engage in that lesson as many times as they watch their video. The same is true for parents. Parents who won't read a page of printed information sent home in a backpack will take the time to watch a video of their child. If, with the image, comes information about the classroom, the teaching practices or ideas they can use at home, the video can become a wonderful tool to bridge the gap between the classroom and home.


 * IN THE SIXTH GRADE CLASSES**, we worked on perspective and point of view in a work of literature (Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis) with a reading class and word problems with a math class. The literature project used video while the math class worked with stop action animation.

We wanted to give the students a chance to work with the cameras, computers and software before they started conceiving their curriculum oriented films.To do this, we helped them create a fun commercial spoof. Their task was to invent a product and pitch it in a quick commercial. As we did this, they learned about camera angles, how to frame a shot, how to perform for the camera, how to load and edit the footage and finally, how sound can be used to punctuate the action. Here's their commercial:
 * INTRODUCTION TO FILMMAKING**

video coming soon
 * The Air Smeller 3,000**

The Bud, Not Buddy film ended up being 17 minutes, too long to post in one piece, and is presented in two parts. A third part, the interview section, will be loaded separately. The interviews, which were clips in which the students presented the different perspectives and points of view on Bud as seen by various characters in the book, will be loaded as the third clip. The film was performed, shot and edited (by and large) by the students.
 * READING**

media type="youtube" key="0zozF8EEDtk" height="315" width="560"
 * Bud, Not Buddy Part 1**

media type="youtube" key="qZnhYZjGHwc" height="315" width="560"
 * Bud, Not Buddy Part 2**

THE GRAPHIC BOOK OF OUR FILM Once we had finished filming our story, the students then went through their scenes, grabbed still images and re-created the scene as part of a graphic book using Comic Life software. This allowed the students to re-think the telling of their scene using images and re-imagined text. Since the students did not have time to complete this portion of the task, Rand created the document below, both as a printed record for the students and as a way to illustrate the final step of our ideal process. The ideal process being: book to script to film to graphic book (reading to writing to performance, to editing, to a printed graphic and textual re-telling of the story.) The clip below is a Quicktime movie in which each page is seen for 7 seconds. The actual book is available for those who wish to see it. Email boxoflight@me.com. media type="youtube" key="UPReCnhI4cc" height="480" width="640"

Video is a great fit in working with literature. Each shot is a sentence, punctuated by pauses and foley (sound). Each scene is a paragraph with a central thought and supporting footage. Our task was to explore perspective and point of view in literature. We started by having the students create a scene using characters with different points of view. We asked them to choose a different camera angle for each point of view and to think about how the camera could be used to convey that character's perspective. Once they are editing, the students are thinking about mood and a character's unspoken emotions as they choose the right music to underscore the scene. They need to think beyond the text to do this.
 * THOUGHTS ON USING VIDEO AS A WAY TO EXPLORE LITERATURE**

Our math class created stop action animations of word problems. Many of the word problems related to the novel, Bud, Not Buddy, and to the Depression, the book's setting. The students created many stop action films. A few examples are posted below.
 * MATH**

VIDEOS TO BE LOADED HERE

Stop action animation challenges students to find ways to graphically envision a math problem. It asks them to think visually about the process of solving the problem and lets them see and even touch a physical representation of the answer. The drawback to using stop action with math is the time it takes to create even a short film representing a math problem.
 * THOUGHTS ON USING STOP ACTION ANIMATION AS A WAY TO WORK ON MATH**

We began using clay for the stop action animation. This worked well in certain aspects but was, I felt, a bit slow. The class' focus was more on the animation than the math. In the final days, we used 'found objects' (Skittles, crayons, cards, etc.) for the animations. This worked better because the students spent more time working with the actual problem and less time building their manipulatives. I think that, if we were to keep exploring this, we would probably move away from clay and find that found objects, manipulatives and bodies would be the materials to use in math stop actions.

We used iStopMotion and SAM Animation for our stop action movies and edited in iMovie and MovieMaker. Images from some of the movies were then turned into graphic books using Comic Life Software. Here is a quick video tutorial on Comic LIfe. We'll be adding tutorials for the other software soon. media type="youtube" key="H0cM0oaWYLU" height="315" width="420"
 * SOFTWARE USED IN THIS RESIDENCY**