An Interesting Way to Teach.

Today I came across a fantastic visual literacy website; The Literacy Shed, that offers animation that can be used within educational planning. In their Shed Full of Animations there is a fantastic array of animations to choose from to incorporate into lesson planning.

This animation; BROKEN: Rock, Paper, Scissors offers a wonderful insight for children into what it would be like if Rock, Paper and Scissors from the popular game, ever met.  The animation itself creates an awe inspiring atmosphere without words with the ambiance created through the fabulous 3D animation and atmospheric music.


 

The story line is gripping, a little scary and extremely moving which, in my opinion, will entice the viewers attention and create Identification, empathy towards the characters thus allowing the educator to embed many of the aspects of the curriculum such as P,S,E, Literacy, Creativity, Communication, Thinking Skills and ESDGC into this creative lesson.

 

The Literacy Shed offer these ideas into meaningful and thematic lesson planning for this particular animation which will cover most learning objectives in Key Stage 2 however could be adapted to Year 1 and 2 in the Foundation Phase, and supports outcomes required by the Literacy and Numeracy Framework.
 

Teaching Ideas

• Write character profiles for the 3 main characters.
• Compare and contrast the character traits.
• Write a description of paper from the point of view of Rock.
• Think about the game and how Rock could defeat scissors.
• Create a wanted poster for Scissors.
• Create models of each character out of suitable materials, e.g. origami for paper and clay for rock.
• Create setting descriptions for each character's home.
• Write the story from the point of view of each character.
• Write the dialogue between Rock and Paper when he tried to persuade her to come with him.
• Add tension to the narrative for the chase and battle scenes.
• Focus on story endings, starting when Paper wakes up. 
• Write 'Origins' stories for each of them, where have they come from? How where they created?

This web site really is a fantastic resource and I am glad that I found it.  Planning creative interesting lessons for children that will engross and interest the children is a key requirement for todays learners so they believe that learning is fun and is also invaluable to the practitioner to combine many curriculum requirements into one lesson. 

Watching animation to deliver a lesson however comes with many angles of learning and as Ploetzner and Schlag (2013) explain learning strategies must be developed for the learner to internalise and draw meaning from the animation.

Stories in the Making.

Creating a story board is the initial stage to creating an animation.  By doing this you organise your ideas and create a step by step plan to incorporating movement with sound.



 

By using this technique, as a group, we created a storyboard for our animation The Circle of Life.  Karen J Lloyd  explains that a storyboard is not simply a bunch of pictures, it is a form of communication that explains the process of an animation sequentially and in an organised manner.

 

With our storyboard completed we were then able to start creating our characters, organising audio through music and sound effects, choose backgrounds and decide upon movement. We decided to challenge our creative abilities by using clay for our stop-motion animation.
 

 

Our Storyboard

Our Characters

The use of a story board to  plan our stop-motion animation has enabled myself and other group members to plan the story, sound and movement.  This is an invaluable tool, not only as the group were able to make decisions prior to filming, it gave focus to the groups aim and encouraged debate, reflection, organisation and decision making.  We were able to brain-storm our ideas and compromise direction as well as delegate different tasks.

Reflecting on the use of a storyboard has allowed me to understand the collaborative work that has to be conducted.  Working as a team, sharing and decision making are all skills that the learner will construct as they bounce off ideas in a fun and interesting learning experience.

Making the figures was a very enjoyable. We used oil based clay to mould the characters as this was provided.  This type of clay is according to Stop Motion Softwear website the best for shape durability and movement.  Water based clay such as Play Doh will dry out and crack.  I made the baby, the grown man, the woman (including her growing tummy) and the stork.  I tried to make as much of each character out of one piece of clay, however with clothing it was quite difficult so with my characters the head, hands and legs or feet in the case of the grown man, were separately connected.  This concerned me as I thought that they would detach but after connecting them and trialling movement I was pleased that they remained connected.  I also found that balance was an issue so producing a figure with equal weight and out of proportion feet was time consuming and sometimes fiddly. 

Not being as experienced as some in creating models for animation I followed the advice given on a blog called Animation for Education which I found very useful.

 

When making models from Plasticine look for the following:

1- Simple, bold designs.

2- Large features which are easy to animate and bring to life.

3- Make sure the models can stand up on their own.

4- Make models large enough to animate and move.  (Animation for Education, Accessed 2014)