Teach-Primary-18.3

In this lesson, children will use green screen techniques to help them examine, refine and re-present their understanding of a book or text. They will use software and props to create a book trailer, film a scene from a story, or ‘interview’ a character. You can download all the activity sheets for this lesson from tinyurl.com/tp-greenscreen When you first start using green screens, it’s good to let children experiment, and explore possibilities and limits. Letting them interact with the props and the software is a valuable experience, particularly for visual learners. 1 | SELECTING YOUR SOURCE MATERIALS During this extended lesson it will be useful to evaluate each activity as the children complete it, so that you can monitor their learning and make sure their final film will be a success. You may want pupils to work with printables, or draw, colour and cut out their own characters. However, wooden peg dolls provide a sturdy alternative that will save time on crafting and allow the children to focus on story and imagery. If you do use printables, for characters or text, laminate them before filming begins so that they don’t get damaged while the children are setting up their sets or moving the props around. Once you’ve introduced the software to the children, explain that they are going to use it to make a short film. Discuss books that have been made into films, for example Coraline and the Lemony Snicket series. In groups, direct the children to a small selection of books and ask them to choose one that they’d like to make a short film about. Explain that will be able to choose whether to reproduce a scene from the story, stage a pretend interview with one of the characters, or create a trailer to promote the book. Show them some clips to explain what you mean for each of these. A quick internet search should help you find some of the lovely book trailers that publishers create for new releases. START HERE MAIN LESSON WHAT THEY’LL LEARN l How to operate green screen software l How to place and manipulate props l Information retrieval and text selection l How to storyboard a scene l Ways to make a scene more interesting or informative STEM, English Make sure you are familiar with how your green screen software works, and download a selection of images to use as your movie backdrops. Set up your app and props; select a picture as the background and make sure the app is connected to a camera. Ask pupils if they can guess what the equipment is for. Have them place different objects against the green background and see what happens on the screen. Let the children play with the setup for a few minutes, then show them how to record from the app and add different backdrops to the scene. Green screen magic – bring a book to life Want to get children thinking deeply about a text? Challenge them to film it, says Amanda van Dijk-van ‘t Noordende UKS2 LESSON PLAN greenscreenbox.nl/en 76 | www.teachwire.net