I want to talk about a new project I started with my African American Literature students. Have you ever had your students doing something in class and everything went smoothly and the students were learning at a high level and were super engaged and you just felt like SuperTeacher? I am feeling that way about this project.
It's the end of our first unit (on Race and Identity) and I didn't want to give a test that had them regurgitating information. I also had already had them write an essay comparing and contrasting their views about race before and after the unit, so I didn't want them to do an essay. But I did want to see what they had retained from the unit. What was there to do?
This summer I came across the RSA video project featured on Blogush. I loved the thought, but I was terrified to try it out because 1) I've never made one myself so I didn't think I could teach the students how 2) I didn't think I had the necessary equipment to make the videos and 3) I figured it would take SO LONG to do it. I just wasn't sure it was worth the headache or the time.
This semester I was lucky though. I have a very small class (I started out with 12 and now have 15 students) of only juniors and seniors and most of the students I've had before so I don't have any discipline problems. I don't think I could do the project with a super large class or with a class of students I couldn't trust to do the work.
I used the information from Mr. Bogush's site to create my own information sheet for the students.
I showed the students what an RSA video was by using the Blogush site and showing the videos on my SmartBoard. The students got excited once they saw what they would be doing!
I broke my students up into three groups (giving 4-5 students per group). Each group had one of the questions from the sheet (What is race? How do we combat misconceptions about race? How should parents teach their children about race?). These were all essential questions we dealt with in our readings, writings, discussions, and the videos we watched in class. Once students were in the group, each group was given a piece of paper and told to break their answer into five distinct parts and to write those five parts down.
The next day, when my students came in, I had them create a staircase outline. A staircase outline kind of looks like this:
Only my students were told to only have five stairs for their outline (for the five main parts of their answers). Each "stair" had the main idea on the top of the stair and then they had to write out what three images they would use to convey the main idea underneath.
Once they knew what images they wanted to draw to convey their main ideas, I had them use white boards and paper to start figuring out how to draw. At this point I realized they needed a little more structure. I stopped the groups and told them to decide who would be drawing the pictures and who would be doing the voice-over for the narration portion of the video. I also gave the option for one person to be the "writer of the narration," as a few groups had five people in them and that person ended up needing a job too. With the groups of four, two were drawing and two would be speaking.
The third day, my students went through a "dry run" of drawing on the white boards and practicing for being video taped. We got through two groups' videotaping. I used my iPhone to video them drawing. They only needed three whiteboard markers and an eraser.
The fourth day, I was going to be gone, so I made that day the "narration writing" day. They had to figure out how to write out what they wanted to say to convey their five main ideas and to make sure that the images they decided to use would go along with what they were saying.
I went home and sped up the videos on my MacBook Pro using iMovie. I sped up the film to 5x. (There is the option to do so by clicking on the options button when looking at the video panes, then moving the scale away from the turtle and closer to the rabbit.)
Notice where it says clip adjustments. You click that. Then you need to stabilize the video:
This could take a while. Then, do you see where it says speed? Move it closer to the rabbit (I set it at 200). You may also choose to reduce motion distortion on the video. Also, click on the Audio tab and turn the volume down to 0% so that you don't have silly chipmunk voices in the video. It is quite hilarious to listen to, though!
The fifth day I will be back, so we will finish videotaping the last group and we will do the voice-overs for the groups. To do the voice-overs, the plan is to use a small microphone that attaches through USB to the computer and then to save each audio file. I then plan to add the audio file to the video file on iMovie (much the same way you would add music to a video or slideshow on iMovie). Then I can save the videos and we can watch them in class!
I am hoping my principal will have them added to the school website for others to see :)
The students have been fully engaged with this project. They have been having fantastic discussions about the content of the class and they have been working together to make the project work. This project has been a dream. I wish all of my crazy ideas would work as well as this one did.
I don't recommend going into a project like this as I did; it's probably best to know what you are doing first. I am not always the smartest and I don't always follow my own advice though.
If you do something like this in your classroom, I'd love to hear about it! How did it work for you? How did you set it up?
**Once the videos are complete, I will see if at least one group will allow me to upload the video as an example :)
