4th Grade Texas History Movie Maker Project
All 4th Graders in Texas study Texas History. As part of their study, these 2 teachers had students research different events or people surrounding Texas’s fight for freedom. They used print and electronic sources (mostly from Nettrekker). Once they were familiar with their event, they wrote a summary.
The summary part is where we got a little lost in the woods. At first the goal was to type a few sentences of the summary on each frame of the movie. It soon became evident that that was not a good idea. So the teacher switched to the format her Social Studies partner teacher used. The completed movie that her partner teacher did will be linked below.
We switched gears and decided to illustrate and voice over one frame per event or person. The students opened a powerpoint template in which they used word art for the title of their person or event, and shortened their summary to fit in a caption box at the bottom.
After saving their slide (which had been approved by the teacher) they printed it out in color, then used colored pencils to illustrate the summary.
Our Samsung doc cameras also have the capability to capture jpgs of anything you put under them. So the teacher had each student capture their slide, or event illustration, as a jpg. Sample 1; Sample 2
She then brought them all into one Movie Maker project, in order.
Each student then used the audio editing component of Movie Maker to narrate their event, as the frame, with their illustration played in the movie.
Click here to view a completed Texas History Movie.
