Here’s an instructional video that introduces the assignment. Watch the first 10 minutes to understand the basics of the assignment.
The other elements, vivid verbs and Showing, Not Telling we will review later together.
Here are some student examples of this type of writing.
Note: It is not a whole short story – you start partway into a story that’s already built up tension. And you are the storyteller.
One of the creative types of projects you can do in ELA is to develop either a video or audio recording and include sound effects. There’s an assignment like this in both ELA A10 and A30.
You could take the ELA A30 Poetry Project Assignment where you have to pick a Canadian poem and record an oral performance reading it with emotion and plays on sounds, but add some soft background music or other sound effects into the file, for one overall polished creation. It demonstrates creativity, attention to detail, and also that you took the project to a developed/polished level, rather than developing just the basics.
You can use a video making program to add in some quiet background music or one or two sound effects. Remember to use these extras like you use salt & pepper – just a little goes a long way!
There’s also a Poetry Performance to develop in ELA A10 – it’s just a voice recording of a poem spoken and performed, but again you can enhance it by adding sound layers to it. What extra type of mood could you create by different sound choices or music?
Note: Be sure to check at the bottom of the blog post to confirm how to save/submit your project. It must be exported to be shared.
A Guide to Understanding how to Use the Media Types toLayer, Level, and Stagger Your Media Files.
Resources to help support you:
Sound Effects Websites:
Pixabay: includes music, sound effects, pictures and video. Free to download.
Bensound.com: Another website that includes Royalty Free music, so long as you source the site.
EpidemicSound.com: Another website with both sound effects as well as music. This one also requires a subscription, but if there’s a song/sound effect you badly need, we can talk about purchasing it. (There’s a free trial period.)
Artlist.io: This is another website with instrumental music of different genres and sound. Royalty Free
Musicbed.com: If you’re looking for background music for your project, there are lots of categories and “moods” of music posted here. Many are instrumental, which would be appropriate for a video project. Let me know if you’re interested in music here – we could get a school account to access it.
Video and Image Files: Creative Commons
Pexels.com: Free creative commons images and videos to download
Canva has both free images as well as templates you can use to create the visuals for your video.
Audio File Online Converter: Sometimes, the audio files you want to use aren’t in a file format a program will recognize. This online site will let you load your audio file and convert it to a file type that’s usable in your program, like mp3.
This website even lets you use videos and will convert a visual file into simply an audio file. Cool!
Video Making Software/Programs:
iMovieForWindows: can search/download the program. It will be in a very familiar format to what you’ve used before.
Animotica: This is a free video making program from the Windows App Store. You can download it on your school device and it allows you to create an image file (just a black screen for background) that you can then attach your layers of sound files onto.
iMovie: Some people have (surprisingly) successfully developed their Poetry Project on their iPhones. Use a program you’re comfortable with and have access to.
Preparing to Export and Submit your Video Project:
Regardless of which program you’re using, you can’t share the Project without Exporting it and Saving it in a file type that can be shared.
What Not To Do: You can’t just share your Project. To open the project, the computer needs to access the additional files included in the project and that only works on the original device it was developed on. Avoid this mistake.
What To Do: Save/Export your project as a Video. That means the program saves all the sound pieces and files together into one single file that can be played on another device. It will also export the video into a playable file type, like Mp4.
There are a lot of cool books on the shelves of the bookcase at the back of the room. Most are separated to fit their best course or genre that they relate to, but it can be deceiving, since many overlap and fit a number of high school ELA courses.
To help you see what your options are and decide, I’ve created online shelves in GoodReads. At the link below, you can skim through and read summaries to every book on my shelf and get a sense of its topic, rather than judging by colour.
There are a lot of stages of writing a formal type of essay like this and not everyone is going to need help on the same elements. Rather than handout a whole wack of handouts to you, I’m making them all available to you digitally; you can use the ones if/when you need help with that part of the writing process.
To help you understand which ones will be useful to you, I’m providing an image of the handouts. Sometimes, you know what the handout you want looks like, but aren’t sure which to open in the Folder shared with you through OneDrive. The file titles won’t always be so clear to tell.
On your iPads, I realized you can open the ones in Word doc format in Safari and click on the Comments. It will then open on the right-hand side and you’ll be able to click each comment and see its correlating phrase highlighted on the page to understand what explanation is given for each.
You can open the handout from OneDrive by clicking on the hyperlink below each image.
Coming up to your Eye Witness account of an event assignment, you’ll be learning to “show, not tell” some of the details in your narrative. This young girl does a really good job of explaining with examples to help you understand the difference between “tell” and “show”.
Hey 10s,
Several of you are heading away and missing school on Friday and Monday for an awesome ski adventure in Fernie, BC. Unfortunately, it’s not without a little homework!
The easiest homework I can assign, though, is to watch an interesting film. The first option is called The Cove about the cruel treatment/slaughter of dolphins to feed the marine entertainment industry. The second documentary, Blackfish, is about exposing the habitat and dangers of marine life in entertaining aquariums like Sea World. If you have another documentary in mind ask me about it and you might be able to use it.
Note: I’ve added another alternative documentary, for more choice. It is called The Disappearing Male and is about the falling testosterone levels around the world that are thought to be the harmful result of the chemicals in all the products around us. There are fewer males being born in the world; what might this lead to? (See embedded video below)
Purpose to consider before viewing:
You will later be creating a multimedia personal response to the documentary of your choice. For now, your homework is to have watched a documentary that’s suitable for the assignment. You should also take note of some specific parts or points of the film that stand out and cause a reaction from you.
You could use an outline like the one below. Be sure to have copied out a minimum of 5 points and 5 reactions.
Event / Comment from film: My initial reaction:
1. 1.
2. 2.
3. 3.
4. 4.
5. 5.
The Cove documentary
Blackfish – this documentary is available on Netflix if you have access to that.
Welcome back from the Winter Break! I hope everyone had a great time away with their family and friends. It’s always a bit rough trying to jump back into school, so for today’s double class we have a movie to watch. It is part of the Quest category of stories, but before watching you need to clarify what that means.
There are two of you who were away to Agribition in Regina all this week. Here’s what you missed and what you should have completed for this coming Tuesday when we’re back to school:
We finished reading the novel. It was a tense ending and not everyone was satisfied with it.
Reflect on what you thought of this novel, including the following prompts. When you’ve reflected, use your Fotobabble app to record your audio response now that you’ve finished it.
What was your impression / response to this novel. If you did / didn’t like it, explain why.
What about the novel (reading) will stand out to you? Any particular messages or elements of the writing?
Adding comments to share your Active Thinking while reading didn’t really pan out with our class, but when I handed out the little slips of paper with an Active Reading Prompt on it everyone did great. How did these prompts affect the way you read the book?
You’ve had experience with Venn Diagrams – they’re used to show how two things have similarities and differences. Make up a Venn Diagram and identify what of this novel and the movie we watched The Village are similar and different.
Psych 20
Students were given a class to continue working on their plan for their visual representation of their podcast experiment. This is to be done in two parts: record the audio explanation of your experiment and then video tape your visual representation of it using tactile movement of objects.
The other classes for this week were used by students planning for carrying out one of three experiments we learned about recently. They were sorted into groups, got to pick between the experiment options, and had to make a plan for how to carry out the experiment, including a list of steps, the differences between experimental groups, thwarting possible confounds etc. They got to do the experiments on Thursday in one of our three ELA / Psych classes that day. They then used Friday’s class to review the data they collected, make conclusions on their control vs experimental group(s) and then record a brief explanation of their experiment’s purpose for the staff who are still curious about what it all really meant.
For you, it worked out to be a good time to be away, since there’ll be no homework for you on this.
