Starting the movie process

There's no point going to conference if you're not going to use all the ideas. I find that if I don't use my new knowledge right away I loose it. So I decided to start using some of the movie making know how I learned from Helen King during ULearn 2012. After teaching two of my math groups I asked the children to "Assume That I'm an Idiot" (thanks Glenn Capelli for that one). I asked my children to create educational videos to teach me how the strategies work. To be completely honest I underestimated how valuable this tool is. Some of the children who hardly say boo during group discussion were putting on their best teacher voices to tell me all about their maths strategy. I was able to watch these video creations and with in minutes I could see who needed more help and who was ready for something a little more challenging. BRILLIANT! Easy and quick assessment that uses the children's strengths (if they want to write, they can write or if they want to act/draw/sing/dance...they can). I have also started something similar with our reading programme. I have explained to my class that hey need to make sure they really understand the reading strategies we are covering curing our group sessions as they will be making videos to teach other groups about how the strategies work. I must say I've never had such attentive listeners during teaching sessions. We'll see what they come up with once we have finished but for now here are some photos of some of the children beginning to put their videos together. If this is only day two, imagine what I can achieve by the end of the term?! Starting the Movie process on PhotoPeach