When is the last time you saw a student BEG to re-work an assignment until it was perfect?

I saw this very thing happen last week!

At Smithfield MS, Mrs. Noonan's 6th graders had been working on a project to research and share important characteristics of each state in the US. With a little pushing and encouragement from the campus academic coach (Mary Hadley) and school librarian (Beth Muirheid) Mrs. Noonan decided to let her 6th graders use the campuses new green screen technology to demonstrate their findings.

Student's spent a day in class researching and planning their videos. They received some tips and resources for good video production from the campus DLS. Students went home to find a great background image and practice their delivery for the next day.

On the second day Mrs. Noonan took her students to the library where Beth Muirheid had set up 5 green screen filming locations. In order to facilitate the process Beth borrowed a few items from Digital Learning and recruited a few extra adults to help students along the way.

A short tutorial was provided on how to use the Green Screen App and then students worked in group pairs to film videos. The excitement in the room was so infectious. Students had brought in props to compliment their backgrounds and it was evident they had truly rehearsed their parts. However, it was a challenge to get everyone's filming complete in one class period.

On day three when filming was complete, students could then make some minor adjustments to their videos in the Green Screen app. Then the 6th graders uploaded their videos to their BISD YouTube accounts and shared the video hyperlinks with their teacher.

The last day of the project was spent in class sharing each other's videos to their own class and others.

At one point someone commented, "These kids are never going to finish because they keep re-filming 5-6 times!" As soon as the statement was made all the adults went silent…..all at once we realized, it's not very often that a middle school student WANTS to redo an assignment 5 or 6 times! It was a wow moment.

If you want to incorporate green screen videos in your classroom, see this article with examples, tips and tools.