A year 5 class from Totley All Saints Primary School were in the CLC this week to practise their German. The morning was spent creating an animation of the numbers 1-30, with small groups taking 4 or 5 numbers each, planning their animation and recording the voiceover. The film can be seen below:
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In the afternoon we used Comic Life to create posters on the colours and some short conversations, and used this as a prompt for some green screen filming.
The pupils worked really well in their animation groups, and produced some lovely German throughout the day.
A year 7 class at Talbot Special School came to the CLC to create a film about life during World War 2 as part of a unit of work on the topic. The students learnt all about air raids, how families built Anderson shelters in their gardens, rationing, wartime songs and poems. They built fantastic sets for an animation, and recorded songs and poems to include in the film, using the green screen to add suitable photos as a backdrop. The project really brought the topic to life, and helped the students understand how life may have been back then. What particularly impressed me was how well the class worked as a team on the animation, taking it in turns to take the pictures, direct and move the characters, and always supporting their less able peers. You can see an extract of the film below:
Over the holidays I came across the Learning Event Generator by John Davitt, which generates over 2500 permutations of topic and activity, for example: “Do the concept of gravity as a blow by blow sports commentary” or one of my favourites: “Do the history of the Olympics as a mime”.
I then decided to create my own slightly more colourful version aimed at Primary teachers, to randomise choice of ICT activities. You can see the Activity Generator here. Type in your own topic at the top, press the button and it randomly generates an ICT activity.
To make it even more useful to teachers, it is in the form of a template, whereby you can edit a text file with your own options, to create a bespoke list of activities. If this template would be useful to you, please e-mail me at cmoore@ssclc.net, and I’ll send it along.
Finally, if you teach at one of our partnership schools (see list here), you are welcome to come along to the CLC with your pupils to be used as guinea pigs for a randomly generated ICT activity session – with small groups working on the same topic, but all using a different medium.
A second Spanish Summer School ran last week, essentially a repeat of the first one with different children. Once again it was a great success, with feedback from parents that their children were really keen to come back each day as they were enjoying it so much.
Here are some of the comic strips and animations they created – the pronunciation is fantastic on the animations:
The CLC recently completed its inaugural Music Video Summer School, inspired by having a number of bands using our music recording facilities this year. Fourteen students spent 5 days at the centre creating a music video in 4 different groups. We asked one of the bands from our partnership schools, The Ruze (website here), to record one of their tracks for groups to create a video for. One of the groups chose to record their own song which gave them a chance to use the recording facilities. The following days were spent planning, filming, animating and editing the films, with students learning how to film using with the green screen and edit in Adobe Premiere.
You can hear feedback from one of the groups here
The finished videos were all excellent and were judged by a panel made up of CLC staff:
The Winner
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Runners Up
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Thanks to all the participants for their hard work, and particular thanks to The Ruze for the track and allowing the groups to film them playing.
We have been running a number of summer schools at the CLC over the summer holidays, including a three day Spanish summer school. We had fourteen year 5 and 6 students learning the basics in Spanish, whilst using lots of ICT. They started with greetings, asking how you are and what your name is. They then used Comic Life to create short conversations illustrated with pictures of their choice:
Everyone then recorded their conversations using mp3 recorders and uploaded both comic strips and audio to Glogster.
On the second day the students learnt the numbers, how to say where you live and some simple weather. They then wrote and performed weather forecasts for a particular Spanish-speaking country in front of the green screen, so they could have a picture of the country in the background. They edited these in Windows Movie Maker (once the backgrounds had been added in Adobe Premiere) and posted them onto their Glogs together with information they had found out about their country.
On day 3 they learnt the colours and pets, and in pairs created a short animation about animals – you can see all their efforts below.
In all it was a successful few days, and the use of ICT certainly seemed to be very effective in helping the participants learn their Spanish. Here is one parent’s feedback regarding her daughter’s experience:
“After her first day she came home and she had learnt more in one day than she had doing a year of Spanish at school! It has renewed her enthusiasm – combining technology/language and creativity has worked really well. Many thanks!”
A year 6 class from Sir Harold Jackson School spent a number of sessions at the CLC this half term to work on a transition project. The original plan was to focus on French and learn about Madagascar with support from Paula Lewis at Meadowhead, but after a visit from a Sri Lankan lady to the school, we changed the focus.
The idea behind the project was to learn more about Sri Lanka whilst learning new ICT skills in order to present what they had found out. They began by finding images of Sri Lanka and using Picnik to edit the photos and add text. Students also researched the weather in Sri Lanka and presented their own weather reports, using the Green Screen to add backgrounds. Finally they created comic strips using Comic Life, to write mini-interviews with imaginary residents of Sri Lanka. By the end of the project, all the students were confident in using the tools and were showing the teachers how it was done. In addition to the work on Sri Lanka, each pupil created a Glog (multimedia poster) to reflect on what they had learnt.
Annabel Wales, the class teacher said, “The experiences of each pupil over the past six weeks have been individual and varied. They have been in charge of their own learning and while having a great deal of fun, have learnt some incredible and very impressive new skills. These skills while mostly linked to IT and geography have also been social skills and skills which will stand them in good stead for their transition to their secondary schools [...] Overall this has been an incredibly successful project for all involved.”
Paula Lewis commented, “This has been a fantastic experience all round for staff and pupils. I have seen the students gain in self-confidence through acquisition of new skills and using new applications [...] Incredible thanks from me to the CLC and to Mrs Wales and all the support staff from SHJ for making this happen, and huge congratulations to the Y6 students of SHJ who have been a total inspiration.”
Two Daleks and a Tardis arrived at the CLC 2 weeks ago, along with a class from Talbot School. The students had been learning about Conflict and the teacher used Doctor Who and the Daleks as an example. This led to two life-size Daleks being created plus a Tardis.
The class came to the CLC to create a video with the Daleks using our Green Screen facilities, where the biggest issue was keeping everyone to the space in front of the green screen. The final film was a success, with a Milky Way backdrop and Doctor Who theme tune, and it was shown at their assembly last week.
A Year 3 class from Sir Harold Jackson came to the CLC to complete a project on weather and climate. Groups of pupils wrote weather reports and extreme weather warnings to act out in front of the green screen. Other groups researched climate change to create a multimedia poster using Glogster. Unfortunately Glogster couldn’t deal with a large number of people accessing it at the same time and so we ended up using PowerPoint instead.
Year 5 pupils from Sharrow School came to the CLC to recreate life in Victorian Britain. They came with costumes and props and acted out scenes inspired by the book Street Child by Berlie Doherty in the form of news reports. These were filmed in front of the green screen, so that they could use photos of the era as backgrounds. They included stealing from the pie shop, escape from the workhouse and a family being evicted from their house. Following filming, they edited the clips in Windows Movie Maker to create their finished film.
The result looks fantastic, and the pupils all enjoyed the experience. Here is a short audio clip from their teacher:
Posted by ssclc 
Posted by ssclc 
Posted by ssclc 
learning new ICT skills in order to present what they had found out. They began by finding images of Sri Lanka and using 
Annabel Wales, the class teacher said, “The experiences of each pupil over the past six weeks have been individual and varied. They have been in charge of their own learning and while having a great deal of fun, have learnt some incredible and very impressive new skills. These skills while mostly linked to IT and geography have also been social skills and skills which will stand them in good stead for their transition to their secondary schools [...] Overall this has been an incredibly successful project for all involved.”
staff and pupils. I have seen the students gain in self-confidence through acquisition of new skills and using new applications [...] Incredible thanks from me to the CLC and to Mrs Wales and all the support staff from SHJ for making this happen, and huge congratulations to the Y6 students of SHJ who have been a total inspiration.”
Two Daleks and a Tardis arrived at the CLC 2 weeks ago, along with a class from Talbot School. The students had been learning about Conflict and the teacher used Doctor Who and the Daleks as an example. This led to two life-size Daleks being created plus a Tardis.
A Year 3 class from Sir Harold Jackson came to the CLC to complete a project on weather and climate. Groups of pupils wrote weather reports and extreme weather warnings to act out in front of the green screen. Other groups researched climate change to create a multimedia poster using Glogster. Unfortunately Glogster couldn’t deal with a large number of people accessing it at the same time and so we ended up using PowerPoint instead.
Year 5 pupils from Sharrow School came to the CLC to recreate life in Victorian Britain. They came with costumes and props and acted out scenes inspired by the book Street Child by Berlie Doherty in the form of news reports. These were filmed in front of the green screen, so that they could use photos of the era as backgrounds. They included stealing from the pie shop, escape from the workhouse and a family being evicted from their house. Following filming, they edited the clips in Windows Movie Maker to create their finished film.