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!
