Claymation Creations

From creating their own set, modeling their characters, and writing their scripts, 5th grade students at Cox Elementary got to experience what it is like to create a claymation short film.  Using the Stop Motion app, students were able to capture picture by picture each action in their story.  

Mallory, Kaylea, and Paige's group truly enjoyed this project.  "We started with the idea of creating our set in space," mentioned Mallory.  "This was a crazy idea, but Mrs. Ascher helped direct us to some tools that we had in the art room that could help. Paige added, "We learned  how to make a background that looked realistic.  We used shiny stars and made a planet out of a 

plastic ball and pipe cleaners.  We used glitter, so with the black light, everything appeared to be glowing in space." The team agreed that planning an entire story requires organization, time, and attention to detail. They team had 304 pictures to put into their film. 

Kaylea points out, "The most challenging part of this project was moving the pictures just the right amount so that that movie was smooth and not choppy."  The group agreed that planning the script and assigning roles was important to getting things done on time.  "We helped each other think of new ideas to add on to our story.  Two people worked on the background, while the other worked on props and organizing the pictures," stated Mallory. This project required much communication and collaboration.

In art, these students were introduced to several famous paintings. They decided to include The Mona Lisa, Starry Night, and Dancing Lady in their film. "These are paintings in our classroom and we’ve talked about them as a class," said Paige. "This is why we decide to have our characters talk about each of these in space. We wanted to do space to be different and think outside the box." Overall, these students and the entire class learned not only about story creation, but organization, communication, and how to publish entertaining work for a target audience. In fact, it's not just the students at Cox Elementary that felt this project had impact. The University of Southern California featured this project in the Toolkit for Digitally-Literate Teachers.