Making Movies to Motivate Writers

02 July 2011
I just found another cool site today - Zimmertwins!  So I spent some time playing ... check out my movie by clicking on the picture.  (Please excuse my shameless self-promotion)   ;)



Although you can make a movie for free, I bought a one-month membership for less than $4.00.  The site advertises 50% off the membership costs if buying for a classroom.

I think this would be so much fun in the classroom - talk about motivating students to write!  It's also great for differentiation, because there are ready-made movie starters for those students who have difficulty choosing a topic or getting started.

I think I'll do this with my students during our media unit.  I also think I'll pair it with teaching dialogue, and have students use proper punctuation with quotation marks in the speech bubbles.  Students would have so much fun sharing their videos over a large screen - you could even turn it into a "movie premiere party" complete with popcorn.  When students finish making their movies, they can email the link to you for assessment, and they can even email it to their parents to share what they've been doing in class.  SO.MUCH.FUN!

7 comments

  1. Oh how neat!!! I'm gonna bookmark it and play with it. I just hope and pray that it isn't blocked by the filter our county puts up at our school site. This would be amazing to use with the kiddos!!! Thanks for sharing and your movie was too cute!

    4th Grade Frolics

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  2. How cool...I love it and I saw no shameless self promotion whatsoever...No clue what you're talking about =)

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  3. I love that! We are always on the lookout for cool new tools. Thanks for sharing!

    Becca
    Simply 2nd Resources

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  4. Thanks for sharing this! It made me think of a video I made for prime and composite numbers at Go Animate. I have put it on my blog. I just love new resources and ideas.

    As far as self-promoting, what were you talking about???????

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  5. I love this and can definately see myself using it in the classroom next term. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. Thanks, everyone - I had a lot of fun playing with this ... and so has my daughter.

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