I started off this two day session pretty confident it would all go well based on the last one. I had the same teacher with me who was keen, engaged and amazing at controlling the class.
The brief was to make a stop frame animation exploring the scenario that Earth was so polluted we had to colonise Space, and how would we communicate with any Aliens on the planets we landed on. The first task we set was to create an alien language, and the kids came up with some lovely symbols. However, when we asked them to come up with a story-board for an animation they just didn't seem to be able to get going. I decided to try some drama exercises to get them to imagine the situa
tion better. I divided the class in two, and said one half were aliens and the other human. In pairs they had to act out the human landing on the planet for the first time. Every single human just walked up to the alien , waved and said "hello".
So I then split them into groups and gave then different details about what they could or couldn't do. i.e. some aliens had never had any predators, some couldn't hear, and so on. We then repeated the exercise and started to get some more imaginative ideas. I then did some word association with them, and a few other creative thinking exercises. I then showed them a demonstration of Stop-Motion Animation, which usually gets a great response, and it just seemed to fall flat. By the end of the day I felt I had failed to engage or excite the kids, and both myself and the teacher had to seriously reprimand the kids for their behaviour.
The next m
orning I gathered a lot of materials from the Art Cupboard, and when the kids came in basically said, right get on with it now! They just got stuck in straight away, worked well in their groups, came up with great ideas and worked like Trojans all day, with very little behaviour issues. It was an amazing difference to day one. There was a new TA in the class, and she asked me what I had done to the kids the day before to inspire them so much, she was amazed by their ideas and concentration.I would like to think that the exercises in mind-mapping, role play and word association helped to push their Creativity to a deeper level than what first came into their minds. I also think that part of the day may have been quite challenging, hence the apparent apathy and behaviour.
We ended up with some origional and thoughtful animations, and I felt it was a big success.
