In this reflection I will be discussing my experience creating a stop motion animation video with students from Marysville Elementary School using the Gibbs reflective cycle.

On Tuesday October 25th, I had the opportunity to go to Marysville Elementary School to learn about SD6 and make stop motion videos with four grade 4 students as well as with Chelsea! I really enjoyed this experience and I liked that we did it in partners as I found it was much easier to get things going and help out the students with two adults. I also really enjoyed watching how excited and happy the kids were making their stop motion videos. I was impressed by how creative they were and could tell all of them have very big imaginations, and it was great that they all got along really well and worked really well together. I noticed when one had an idea they all took it into consideration and made sure everybody’s ideas were included, which is something that normally doesn’t happen with everyone when working in groups. I thought it was a great idea to complete the planning sheet before starting the video so that there is some organization for gathering ideas and thoughts, what I did find a bit challenging about this part though was I think it was hard for the girls to stick to one story and so it took a bit of time to get things going because they had so many ideas. Their final decision was to make a sleep over party video. While taking the photos for the video I think it went quite smoothly for the most part, however there are some hands and knees that we didn’t have time to edit out but it was be an easy fix. Additionally, I think what we should have done is had one of the girls take the photos as her job as I noticed she wasn’t really participating a lot in the “moving the objects” part of the video. However, half way through we asked her to take the photos instead and I noticed she was having a lot more fun and was engaging more (which I think is part of the reason why there is quite a few hands and feet in the second half of the video!). I think for future when the students get more confident with making stop motion videos, it would be beneficial to have them do this in smaller groups (maybe 2-3 people) as I think it would be easier to gather thoughts in order make a more consistent story as well so each person has a designated roll, as I think this would help make the creating process of the video a bit more organized (we were also working under a time constraint so that’s also something to consider). Overall, I really enjoyed getting to have this experience and learning about making stop motion videos with students, I was so impressed by their technology skills and it was nice they had already had a bit of experience with this. In conclusion, stop motion video is definitely something I would be interested in trying with my future students and I think this could also be a great cross-curricular activity, as there are so many ways science, math, literacy, language, and PE could be part of these videos!

Here is our video in a QR code below: