Joining the Longfellow 10: moviemaking

My friend, George, is up to something interesting again (last year, it was the inspiring Many Voices for Darfur project) and it reminds me that what goes around, comes around. Last year, George asked about integrating stop-motion animation in the classroom as my class was engaged in claymation projects. Now, he has a group of kids calling themselves The Longfellow Ten who are creating and producing stopmotion films around literary terms. And he asked if my students might be interested in joining his students, and possibly others, in building up a site of short stop-motion films on certain themes (George, can we do Math in the spring?).

I looked at my schedule, cleared out a few things and today, I began working with all four of my classes on stopmotion movies. I just let them play today and they had a blast, using the freeware (StopMotion Animator) and webcams and a few even made it into Moviemaker to start messing with titles. Tomorrow, we move on to the real lesson. They will be working in small groups to develop a short movie on a literary theme that is part of our curriculum:

Antagonist

Protagonist

Foreshadowing

Dialogue

Setting

First Person Point of View

Third Person Point of View

Plot

Characterization

Fiction

Non-Fiction

Here is a picture of them at “work” today.

And here is a little movie that I made with one of the classes to show how it is done.

More to come in the future …

Peace (frame by frame),
Kevin

6 Comments
  1. Hi! My name is Ihtesham and I am one of the students working on the Fongfellow 10. It’s awesome how you guys are joining! But i must warn you it’s kind of a little competition. I know you guys will do great and im looking forward to bringing out my competetive side. It took us about a month to do the one were about to post. So you should get your game on because were not going easy!

  2. Kevin,

    My students that are involved in LF10 are psyched that we have some new members from another state! Your idea of adding other topics, like Math, in the Spring, is a great idea. The LF10 is a very flexible organization. A few LF10 members will be dropping you guys some comments over the next week. We look forward to working together to spread awareness about important literary terms. 🙂

  3. Hi ppl!
    This is Rubber Duckey, one of Mr. Mayo’s students working on the Lonfellow Ten videos. So far we have done videos for the words ‘inference’ and ‘resolution’. To watch the videos visit our LF10 website. Just click my name to get there!
    I think its so awsome that ppls from other states are making LF10 videos! We can’t wait to see them! =)

  4. Whats up? It’s Tigris, one of Mr. Mayo students and one of the FL10 members. It is so awesome that others from other states are doing FL10 like Massachusetts [you guys rock]. If you want to see more FL10 clips or write any comments click on my name above.
    SEE YA DUDES and DUDETTES!

  5. Its always good to see other guys learning (barely) using stop motion.
    Being a pround memeber of The Longfellow Ten, and also a guy who makes movie himself on youtube, I appreciate the fact that people besides myself and others in my area are making movies in this way.
    Keep it up!

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