Day 162: Using Plasticine To Make A Digital Book Come Alive

This collaboration project began at the Reading For the Love of It conference when we attended a session by Barbara Reid. She inspired  us by her techniques and her plasticine artwork.  Using real examples, she talked about projects she had done with students.  Her clear step by step instructions and student examples, made us feel  that it was something we could definitely do with our students.

We do character ed assemblies at East Oro P.S.  and we were emphasizing "Honesty" as March's character trait.  We chose Franklin Fibs because we thought the kids would really enjoy making the animals out of plasticine.  We needed a book of a good length, easy for them to read and follow  the story.  

Here's the finished copy of our digital book, Franklin Fibs!

To begin, our Grade 2 students started practising to use the techniques with plasticine that were modelled on YouTube and in a variety of Barbara Reid books.  Students were exploring colour mixing, using tools and various techniques by creating an outdoor picture that could show anything they wanted.  

In our Grade 2 class, we co-created success criteria for expressive oral language that should be used when presenting a poem or other oral reading.

Then we read the Franklin story and talked about the message.  They were each given a page of text that they needed to sketch with paper, pencil and pencil crayons.  We discussed the need to simplify the picture, knowing that the next step would involve plasticine.  This part surprised us, as students were able to focus on the  important  aspects of their picture.  Then they had to use their sketch, placed beside a cardboard base to begin creating their plasticine image.  This stage took 4-5 sessions to build the background, add the details and  textures to come up with their finished product.  Then the students practiced reading aloud their text to match their image according to the success criteria.  We photographed each picture using the camera on an iPad.

Watch our "How-to" video made in iMovie

In the app, Adobe Voice (available on  the Airwatch catalogue for teachers who sign up for a free account) we added the photos from the camera roll, then had each student record their section of the story.  Later, we were able to tap and drag the photo/recordings into the proper sequence.  We then added the music from the choices available in the app.  An important tip is to turn the volume down to make sure student voice can be heard clearly over the music.

Lora Langner and Jenn Fyfe