PSA and Video project

1. Scenario: You decide to incorporate a digital video project in your classroom. What is the content area/project/age level? What are the preparations you will have to do prior to beginning this project? What are some of the challenges? Be specific - think like a teacher in the public school system and make a checklist and timeline of the project from beginning to end - starting with prep work and ending with the final project.

Write this up as an informal lesson plan. You don't have to use the lesson plan format. Just post in your blog as a few paragraphs and bullet lists. I should have a good idea of what the project is all about.

I plan on teaching upper elementary- fourth or fifth grade- let’s say fifth for this project. I would plan on having my students use this project as:
• An English lesson
• To explore idioms
• Fifth grade lesson
The students will be broken into groups of about 3 and they will have to create short clips explaining their idiom. The first 20 seconds or so should be a literal translation of the idiom, and the next 20 seconds or so should act out what the idiom really means.

Day 1:
The students will explore what an idiom is. They will brainstorm for idioms as a class. At the end of class the teacher will introduce the idea of the project for the next class.
• What is an idiom?
o An idiom is a combination of words that has a meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves.
o It can have a literal meaning in one situation and a different idiomatic meaning in another situation. It is a phrase which does not always follow the normal rules of meaning and grammar.
 To sit on the fence can literally mean that one is sitting on a fence. I sat on the fence and watched the game.
 However, the idiomatic meaning of to sit on the fence is that one is not making a clear choice regarding some issue. The politician sat on the fence and would not give his opinion about the tax issue.
• Most idioms are unique and fixed in their grammatical structure. The expression to sit on the fence cannot become to sit on a fence or to sit on the fences.
• However, there are many changes that can be made to an idiom. Some of these changes result in a change in the grammatical structure that would generally be considered to be wrong.
o To be broken literally means that something is broken. The lamp is broken so I cannot easily read my book.
o To be broke is grammatically incorrect but it has the idiomatic meaning of to have no money. I am broke and I cannot go to a movie tonight.
Day 2:
• The students will be broken into groups by drawing their idiom phrase out of a hat.
• The students will need to move to sit in their groups and start to story board what they will be doing for their video.
• The students will be given a sheet of paper with 4 blanks (2 for literal and 2 for the situational meaning).
• The students should draw what they plan on acting out in each scene.
• The students should not say their idiom in the literal translation. This way the class will need to guess the idiom.
• After the group finishes the story board they will present it to the teacher for approval.

Day 3:
• The students will finish up their story boards and start to shoot their video.
• The teacher will give a quick presentation on how to use the video camera-
o Stop/Start button
o Rewind/FF
o Wide/Tight
o Playback
o The teacher should make sure that all tapes are rewound to the beginning.
• The students will go off in their own groups to quickly shoot their two scenes.

Day 4:
• The students will finish shooting their scenes today.
• The teacher will call groups up one at a time to pull the video onto the computer.
• The teacher will show the students their project first.
• At this time if the teacher has the correct software she could do some slight editing.
Day 5:
• The students will present their videos to the class.
• The students will play their literal clip first and then have classmates try and guess what their idiom is.
• After several guesses they will play the second clip which will include the idiom being verbally spoke n while the scene is acted out.

Challenges:
This project could be a problem if your school district does not have the correct equipment. It would also be challenging to do if students need more time than given because some student might not be able to meet outside of class. To remedy this the teacher should offer the students extra time at recess to work on their project if they feel that their group needs it. Also it may be hard because you really need to trust your students to send them off out of sight to with equipment. You would also need to get parent permission to take video and permission from the principal to have students roaming the hallways without a teacher.

My PSA