Each year with my 5th graders we do a unit on advertising which ties in to their classroom UOI How We Express Ourselves (HWEO) where the focus is on media. Prior to our book trailer study, we work on evaluating websites and fake news, but that's another post!
Last week I introduced our unit and had the students watch four different book trailers. Before viewing the trailers I recorded an asynchronous less (we are back to distance learning) where I showed them a movie trailer and then contrasted it with a book trailer from a big name publishing company. I shared with them tools that the creators/advertisers use to hook the viewer...
Trailers are:
-Short and concise
-Usually have a lot of suspense (entices the viewer to want to watch the rest)
-Introduce the plot and characters without giving too much away
-Utilize sound effects/music to add to the ambiance
-Never reveal the ending
While watching the four sample trailers, I had the students record their observations of how the advertisers designed the trailers. Did they use moving images? Sound effects? Author interviews? Animations or real people/actors? etc.
This week I recorded a lesson introducing the book trailers that they will be making. I am still working out what platform we will be using. In the past (pre-Covid), I had the students form groups and use our library iPads to create their trailers with the templates on iMovie....because students are now working from home and it is a BYOD program, not all kids have access to iMovie. I just got word from our tech department that they cannot use Animoto, which is the platform suggested by BiblioGarden...so we will see what I can come up with! GDPR makes everything a bit trickier.
On Seesaw this week, the kids will be planning out their trailers and answering the following questions:
We'll see how the kids get on this week!
*Thanks to BiblioGarden for the ideas that helped me create this unit