(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge over at Two Writing Teachers) As we were nearing the end of our Parts of Speech unit, my students and I were talking about Schoolhouse Rock and how using music and video can add a little spice to an otherwise sort-of-dull topic.
Yesterday, a student came up to me and said she and a friend had created a music video about Verbs. It’s pretty neat, but what was better was after showing it to the class, the two talked about how they did it. They used MovieMaker, with animated clip art, and then downloaded an Auto-tune App (ahhh — I’ve railed against Auto-tune before in this space, but given it helped my students be creative, I will step back) that allowed them to record their voice, email the file to themselves and then download and upload into Moviemaker.
The video itself is simple enough, but the fact that they did it just to do it, and then shared it with me …. I love that kind of learning. It went beyond parts of speech, and into media production, publishing (the video is now at our classroom blog site) and reflecting. I bet they didn’t know they were learning, though. They were just having fun.
I wonder if any of their classmates will get inspired ..
Peace (in the verb),
Kevin