When students read a novel in my classroom, I love to present students with several project ideas as a culminating assessment rather than give a novel test or have the students write an essay. Yes, writing essays is very important and we do that throughout the entire year. However, for middle schoolers, I want to teach them to own the material in the book, to show deep and thoughtful understanding of the themes, and also to take control of their knowledge of the text we read.
I give my students at least 3, but no more than 5, choices for a project to complete at the end of a novel. One of my favorites is to create a movie trailer for the novel. Students must show a deep understanding of both themes and plot to be able to create this project. I have used this movie trailer idea several times, and even though the kids are super excited to try it, very few have completed it. So, I asked the kids why that was. The answer - they didn't know how to edit the videos to make them look good. They only knew how to shoot a video, but not how to finish it.
So, I had to solve the problem with something easy to use, free, and readily available to my students. Then I found it - OpenShot! OpenShot is all of those things and can used on Mac, Windows, and Linux. My students could easily pull it up on their Chromebooks in school and use it with their classmates, which eliminates students having to get together outside of class to work on a project. It is wonderfully free, which we all know is a teacher's dream come true, and it is easy to use. Students are able to quickly and easily navigate OpenShot to make some seriously fantastic videos.
I love this student centered activity because students are able to show how they visualize a novel while reading. Their creativity shines forth when creating a movie trailer. OpenShot makes it so much easier, too.
https://www.openshot.org/
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