Direct Instruction

The learning intention for this lesson was to create instructions which other students can follow.

The video shows brief instructions for the task, followed by students in action, creating their instructional movies.

Reflection

I had planned to get the students doing more of the brainstorming of the types of things they could be teaching other students about. I wanted them to do the thinking about what other students may find useful. However, I only see these students once every two weeks for this class so I was wanting to get them working on their projects as quickly as possible to maximise the time they were on the iMacs. As a result, you can see in the movie that the instructions I gave were very one directional - me talking to the students. Time is always such a tricky thing in the classroom. In my class, I am always very conscious of giving the students as much time as possible on the iMacs as this is when they are able to try things out, ask questions and use me as a resource to support them with the formation of their ideas in their projects. I would love to do this lesson again with more time so students can really think about what movies would be most beneficial to others, and then have time to really plan out what they are going to say and how they are going to best present it. I think they still did an very good job of giving instructions in such a short time frame. This lesson really demonstrates just how confident some of these children now are at using Photopea to animate.

Things to note

It is very difficult in any classroom to have more than one student recording audio at any one time. In the Creative Space, the students become quite used to working quietly, knowing someone else is recording. If you were to do something similar in your classroom, you may want to consider how you are going to set up 'norms' for volume when this is happening, and where students are best to sit when recording audio to reduce background noise.