Camera Freeze Frame

If you are looking for a good 1.5 day project, this is a good one. Camera Freeze Frame is an activity which I learned from Carrie Toth at NTPRS a few years ago, and it is an extension of another activity which I had done in the past. Essentially, the basic idea is to give students a digital camera, with which they will take pictures which depict scenes from a particular story. These pictures can then be used as a matching activity (which scene is this from the story?) or as a digital storybook. Carrie Toth has taken this idea to a whole new level using the app Educreations.

The concept is still the same: give students a digital camera and have them depict scenes from a story which the class has been reading.

PreClass Directions:
As the teacher, you will need to do the following:

1. Pick out a short story which students will depict using pictures. I have found that the story should be no more than 9 sentences due to time restrictions.
2. Organize the class into groups of 6 (if possible). I preselected the groups myself based on student personality types so that there would be a mix.
3. Set up a Google Drive folder where students will deposit their pictures
4. Reserve digital cameras for the class. Each group will need a camera. I chose not for students to use their phones, because since they will upload their pictures to Google Drive, every student's phone is different which results in interface issues.
5. Reserve a few laptops so that multiple groups can upload their pictures at the same time.

Class Directions
Day 1

1. Go over your particular story to ensure that meaning has been established for all students. For this story, I did a choral reading and then played a round of Stultus.
2. Here are the directions which I handed out: Freeze Frame directions
3. Go over the directions with the class to ensure that all understand what they are.
4. Give the groups time to select student jobs and to begin to stage each scene.

Day 2

1. Give a digital camera to the photo taker in each group.
2. Give students a choice of props.
3. Set out 2-3 laptops around the room.
4. Each group will have 30-35 minutes to "shoot their scenes." 
5. When each group is finished, the photo taker will upload the pictures to his/her group's folder. 

Day 2 Post Class Directions

As the teacher, you will need to do the following:

1. Using Educreations,for each group, create a presentation by uploading each picture onto a slide. Because each picture has the sentence number in it, it is easy to put the pictures in order.
2. For each presentation, record your voice narrating each story. Add any graphics using the whiteboard function.

Day 3

1. Show each group's video to the class.

Observations

1. What a fun activity for students! This activity also ranks high on Bloom's Taxonomy, as it is a high-level critical thinking activity; students are creating their own meaning and interpretation of the story.
2. Students actually want to see each other's videos. Because they are all familiar with the story, students want to see how others interpreted the story.
3. In showing the video to students, you are getting in repetitions of the story, although students do not realize it. All students care about is watching the videos, but this is a VERY sneaky way to get into subconscious repetitions of vocabulary and of structures.

Here are some links to a few of the presentations which my students created (you will need Flash to view them):

1) Group 1
2) Group 2 
3) Group 3

Thanks again to Carrie Toth for this idea!