Harlem Renaissance Animated Biography – 5827

Developing: Students were given the option to use any website when conducting research about their chosen artist. The website had to be credible, have an identifying author, a recent published date, and any information had to be verified by at least one source. The teacher did provide the students with a given a set of questions to answer. Students could have scored higher on the TIPC had they been given the opportunity to construct their own questions to guide their research.

Approaching: Teacher selected the student groupings, however students established their roles within the group and were responsible for ensuring that the group remained on task. Some advanced students also voluntarily assisted struggling members of other groups. The students were working towards an authentic task, but would have benefited had team members worked collaboratively within Google Drive. This lesson was supposed to be taught in conjunction with a music class. The idea was to have students in both classes were going to team up with one another in order to compose background music from the time period to the animation. This did not happen due to time constraints.

Developing: Students had a wide range of choice in creating their videos. Students applied digital tools such as Paint, Photoshop, or both in order to justify problem-solving practices. Students must work in their groups to figure out how to put a movie together using information compiled by different members of the group, and using a variety of programs.

Ideal: Students create an original video using the guidelines established by the teacher allowing for the class to create meaningful work within the assignment parameters. Students were given various means and few restrictions on how they would assemble their final stop motion animation project. Once their projects were completed students were able to share their projects with the class and reflect on the overall process.