My Final Movie - BOE Presentation

My movie is currently being published on my laptop right now, so I thought I'd start the final blog and get things going. For my final Movie project, I created a presentation for our local Board of Education. I serve on our district science committee and we have been working for years on revamping the way we do Science. Next year is (finally) the implementation and I had to present to the BOE since I was one of the teachers who had the privilege of piloting some of our new kits. These kits are a departure from how we have been teaching science for a long time. Our decision was to go more in depth with fewer subjects (4-5 per grade level) rather than teach a little bit of 12-16 topics. National studies have shown that by reaching deeper into key areas, students are retaining what they are learning, as opposed to memorizing for a test or objective.

The bottom line with this new series is that students are having FUN with Science. And, as with anything ANY of us have fun with - they are remembering what they learned more than before. I spoke with former students from 3 years ago recently about these kits when they piloted them in my class. They all shared wonderfully detailed memories of their Science Lessons.

Since I have been piloting, my students have been fortunate enough to.... learn about what types of fingerprint patterns they have, compare their fingerprint patterns to their siblings and parents, Study Crayfish up close, Study Bess Beetles up close (behaviors and structures), go on a seed hunt, construct a Hydroponic Garden, maintain their own seed sprouter, build working telegraph systems and send coded messages to classmates, create simple and complex serial and parallel circuits, draw schematic diagrams of electrical circuits, explore rubbings and objects that would make for good rubbings, discover venation patterns in leaves, build a model satellite system, a model solar system, and a model sun, create constellation charts and construct constellation models from pen lights, experiment with chromatography, write and exchange hidden messages with their own invisible ink, discover all sorts of curiousities with mirrors and reflections, and work on Science Teams more than they ever have before. You can probably tell that I am pretty passionate about what we are doing and I am extremely excited for debut, district wide, of the new series next year.

For The BOE meeting (it was Dec 5th) I used most of this footage, but I used Photostory to Create everything, I narrated it, and used different music. IT was a big hit and I received several letters, cards, eMails, and phone calls praising the job our group did on our presentation.