This case study explores the story of P7 and their teacher Lyndsay McLuckie at Hallglen Primary School in Falkirk and their interesting back to school task exploring what pupils DIDN’T do over their holiday break.
Context
Our Writing focus for last term was newspaper articles. We had already completed some articles about real news stories and some made up stories which the pupils seemed to be more motivated to complete. When returning from the Easter holidays, I asked pupils to use green screen to create a picture of what they DIDN’T do over the Easter holidays to use as a stimulus/context for their newspaper article. I got the idea from another teacher on twitter.
This activity allowed every pupil to participate meaningfully using creativity despite some of the pupils perhaps not having a lot of fun and exciting things to share after the holidays or to save me from the dreaded “nothing much” response! Children could use their imagination to create their own stimulus for their writing piece which allowed them to write an exciting newspaper article. I also used this opportunity to teach about Creative Commons licence/usage rights of pictures which is part of the second level technology benchmarks to demonstrate an understanding of usage rights and can apply these within a search. The creativity was amazing and we had pupils getting chased by dinosaurs, in space and on rollercoasters!
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What did you do?
Pupils watched a short video all about copyright and creative commons and I used Apple TV to demonstrate on my own iPad how to filter the results on Google Images (Tools>usage rights). Pupils then used Safari to access Google Images and find a picture they were legally allowed to use and that they wanted to write an article about.
I then set up a ‘Green Screen’ (green frieze paper) in class and got pupils to use their iPads take pictures of each other posing how they wanted to be in the photo. Some pupils used the Keynote app to change the size and/or position of themselves in the picture then pupils watched a YouTube video to use the iMovie green/blue screen feature to put them into the picture.
When completed, the pupils airdropped me their photo. I then printed them out and they were stuck to their newspaper article. Apps used: Safari Camera Keynote (to edit size of picture) iMovie AirDrop (to send picture to me).
Safari
Pupils used Safari to find images for their backgrounds.
Pupils took pictures of themselves in front of a green background.
Pupils used Keynote to change the size and position of their posed pictures.
What was the impact?
I saw an increased motivation during the lesson and also for the writing piece it was used as a context for. The lesson encouraged independent work as well as collaboration with peers. Working with digital technologies with older primary pupils always amazes me as they can take an idea and run with it. I could see how the pupils would tinker with their photos to make them fit in the image and then they were able to help each other. Pupils now also have an awareness of usage rights for when we use online images for other areas of the curriculum. Staff observed the level of engagement and were keen to as the Digital Leaders from my class to model this in their classes too!
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Pupil Voice
“I think it was fun because we made funny pictures with us in it.” – EM
“I liked that I could work with different people who took my photo and you can imagine it happened and it didn’t have to be real.” – JH
“I like that it gave a bunch of creativity to us an there wasn’t any restrictions on what we could do because it was pretend.” – RW
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Where next?
I’d like to use this again for other areas of the curriculum for example using green screen in topic lessons or other writing focuses. The digital leaders have already modelled using green screen with their P1 buddies but i would like them to demonstrate this throughout the school also. I’d also like to run CPD for staff on using green screen so they can build their confidence in using it in their own classes in different contexts.
