Animatedly Speaking

The first graders are the latest grade to try their hands at Fablevision's Animation-ish.  

Hadley, the art teacher, and I introduced Animation-ish and demonstrated how to navigate through the options and tools.  I love introducing this expressive tool with her because she brings all of her art, creative theory, knowledge and vocabulary to the introduction.  

The students have been learning about oceans and ocean mammals, so we decided to make this an opportunity for them to express their understanding about oceans and ocean mammals. 

We had them working in pairs, and as with the second graders, watching the students collaborate was the best part of the project.  They had to decide on the ocean mammal, the size of the mammal with respect to the space, any other objects in the picture and when each of then would draw. 

Here is a glimpse of our afternoon and their beautiful expressions of ocean mammals.  I love how they have used this new voice to speak about what they have learned. (Note to self: turn off the volume on my phone :))

Celebrating Spring-ish with Animation-ish

My very good friend and colleague (who happens to be the art teacher) and I wrote a grant to purchase fifteen copies of 
Fablevision's Animation-ish program.  

We introduced Animation-ish to the second graders on Thursday.  Collaboration is the best and this was the best kind of collaboration - it included both teachers and students! I love co-teaching with Hadley. With this project we were able to bring our individual strengths to the experiences  - her artistic and creative expertise and my technology and digital story-telling expertise.

We decided to start small.  We chose the theme of spring-ish words.  The students brainstormed words as a group and then set off in partners to create their spring-ish Animation-ish.

We modeled using Animation-ish, but knew the students would be far more innovative and sure enough, they were!

We loved watching the students work together so well - choosing a word, deciding how to illustrate it and then taking turns with each layer.  Collaboration indeed!

  

I'll post their projects tomorrow!