Kinetic Typography In Poetry- by Anjum Razaq

Kinetic typography is an animation technique that mixes motion and typography to express ideas. In animations the text can fly, grow, expand and change in order to empower the message it is telling. It is impressive how a simple text with the right tone, pace and use of typography can evoke emotions and help the viewer concentrate more on what's being said and understand it better. We used Adobe After Effects to create Kinetic Typography for the poems the children had written in Literacy, thinking about the figurative language being used and how to convey this through type and motion. Here are a few examples that I like, I obviously didn't use the Inglorious Basterds one in class though, I just like the effects shown!

The work is impressive but took a while to produce as After Effects is a complex industry standard software, used in Hollywood as well as advertising across the world. Kinetic Typography can be achieved using Powerpoint and is quite effective although less impressive and comprehensive, however as a software most schools will have it is easy to achieve and cheap! Give it a try to liven up the children’s work! Meanwhile here is an example of the work one of my year 8 pupils did, not bad for a few hours work! The lesson plans are located in the 'lesson plans' tab and resources are in the 'dropbox' account... use them as you will!

Animation Using GoAnimate- by Anjum Razaq

Animation is a fun way for children to express their ideas through a medium that blends art, storytelling, drawing, illustration, design, graphics, sculpture, acting, staging, art directing and filmmaking into one amazing form capable of transforming its creators into magicians. Animation is unbounded by time or reality. It brings to life visions and ideas that are the artist’s creation, limited only by their imagination. With this in mind GoAnimate is a fun software used in-browser that lets you make animated videos for free. Animations can be made in as little as 10 minutes and you don’t have to worry about drawing as it has pre-made characters available, you can create your own cast of characters but will have to become a paying member. There are a variety of packages available but we used the free option which had the limited characters but was more than enough for what we had in mind. 

​A wonderful and easy animation creation software, and it's all browser based too!

The children were given the task of creating an animation for Halloween. Each pair of children created their own account and their videos were kept private until they had finished and then made public. The children felt very excited as their work was published online and they could share it with the world. To publish on YouTube you have to be a paying member but for our purposes we just placed the links to the videos on our school website. Here are a few examples of our work which were created by children aged 11. Enjoy!

LINK- TES lesson plans

Morris Lessmore App as a Writing Stimulus for EAL children- by Anjum Razaq

The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore is an Oscar winning animated short and app for ios. The short was shown in 2011 and received great critical acclaim for it's simple but beautifully told story of a man's journey from the mundane to fantastical in premise similar to The Wizard of OZ. In year 4 teachers used the app to support the Literacy topic of stories set in imaginary worlds. The teachers used the app to engage the children first, connecting the iPad to the IWB, that way they could either read the story aloud or have the programmed narrator read the story. Once engaged the children had an opportunity to play the mini games contained within he app, as well as the usual swiping and pinching there are some other activities such as playing the piano, creating words using alphabet cereal and writing and seeing the letters float away in the breeze.

The children then thought about their hobbies and what they were interested in and planned a scenario for their story. After initial planning they began to write their stories and the work they produced was great. However I want to share the EAL work here as I feel that this is the most interesting. The Morris Lessmore app was a great way to engage the EAL children as the images and animation connected with them, even if they didn’t totally understand the narrator. These EAL children created a bi-lingual story, using their home languages and English to create wonderful stories. I have placed two stories below, have a read and see what you think! (thanks go to Jeanette Haywood, the teacher who led the sessions and whose children produced the following work)

I have placed a one-off lesson plan in the 'lesson plan' tab above, use and enjoy!