Amazing Animals: 4th Grade Students Use iMovie to Create a Presentation About Animal Adaptations Brenda LeCarno- 4th Grade Teacher Echo Shaw Elementary School  Cornelius, Oregon Inspired by the book: What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

What: This project will allow students to integrate expressive arts and language arts along with technology to communicate their learning during a science unit on animal adaptations. Throughout this project, fourth grade students at Echo Shaw Elementary will have an opportunity to use our new eMac computers in a way that will be motivational, expressive and instructional.

Why: The inspiration for this project came just after a read aloud of the book What Do You Do With a Tail Like This by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. Students were captured by the beautiful collage artwork and intriguing adaptations of the animals that were featured on the pages. Among their favorite animals was a lizard that squirts blood from its eyes to confuse would-be predators and a bush baby with huge round eyes to help it see well at night. The book was an engaging introduction to our new science unit on animal adaptations. Each of the students selected an animal species for further study. With the help of two instructional assistants and a patient media specialists, our 32 students began their research. One by one students began to share with me and with each other newly-discovered, amazing facts about their animals.  As I considered the need for an expressive arts activity to go along with this unit and our students' need to share information about their animals, an iMovie in the style of the book they had loved so much seemed a natural choice. As I presented the option to my students I asked "What do you think, would you like to create a class book of our own?" They answered with a resounding "Yeah!"

How: Nearly three weeks were spent on our animal projects. Students reported on their animals' habitats and adaptations. They have presented their knowledge in the form of research papers, animal bio-poems, vocabulary grids and watercolor collage. The culmination will be the completion of the "Amazing Animals" iMovie. The movie will feature student art along with audio of their voices reading the captions as they explain important adaptations of their illustrated animals.  The resulting iMovie will be a collection of information and record of student learning. Each student will receive a copy of the movie on DVD. We will also offer screenings of our presentation for the other fourth grade classes. During our animal unit, students completed their art and "captions" for their contributions to the movie. Although we have moved on to a social studies unit,  students continue their individual and small group work on our animal movie. Students have been eager to work on the project in their free time, including a portion of one or more of their recess blocks to record audio for the movie. We gather as a class a couple of times per week to view our progress and give each other feedback.

Photos View photos of us at work Under Construction- Coming Soon View students' animal art Under Construction- Coming Soon Arts in Education New Horizons for Learning presents Articles, Recommended Reading and Related Links http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/arts/front_arts.htm Animal Adaptations Visit a WebQuest I created on animal adaptations. http://homepage.mac.com/blecarno/lecarno/StudentPage3.html Animal Adaptations Page from Dakota State University http://www.students.dsu.edu/birkela/Science/animal_adaptations.htm Using iMovie in the Classroom iLife: Developing the Creative Curriculum- Information and tutorials for using Apple's iLife software in the classroom http://www.denbighict.org.uk/dv/ilife.html Visit my homepage: http://homepage.mac.com/blecarno/lecarno/index.html email me at: blecarno@fgsd.k12.or.us