My school implemented club day last year. When I first began hosting my Animation Club, I went all out and made membership cards, a packet for students to take home and planned a different animation activity each month of the club. I quickly realized that I was causing more stress and headache for myself than was necessary.

The way our school handles club day is really neat. Students sign up for a club they are interested in and the club meets once a month for the fall semester. In January, students can sign up for the same club or they can sign up for a new club for the spring semester. The club days are on the 3rd Monday of the month during 'Cardinal Time'. I like that the clubs are during the school day, because it means every student has the opportunity to participate. I don't like that the clubs are during my only planning period/break of the day, which means I end up teaching 7 classes in a row with no time off....but once I started simplifying my club experience, things got a lot easier for me to facilitate. 

For the first club day of each session, I show the Brain Pop video about animation. There are two....so I usually show the one about traditional animation, as opposed to the one that is mostly CGI. I show several examples of stop motion animation on youtube and I give my students an overview of what to expect the next few months.

Since the club is a mixture of 5th and 6th grade students---and there are 25 of them---I encourage them to sit with a friend or a group that they can work with the entire time. Students have to work in groups to make movies so it is important to sit with people that they feel comfortable working with. We spent a little time with introductions that first day. I played an icebreaker game they had to stand up or sit down after I made a statement. This also helped me get to know the students and helped them quickly learn a few facts about each other. (I posted the game below). 

Finally, the very first club day, we spent the last few minutes creating a list on the board of possible short film topics. I was blown away by the list of ideas my students came up with. 

​​

When I asked my students this year if they would prefer that I provided an in-depth tutorial each time, where every group would be working on the same thing or if they would rather I just let them make movies, with very little structure. The feedback I received told me they really wanted to just go for it without the in-depth tutorials or if I did show them something, it could be optional.

Last year, during one of our sessions, we watched the animation chef tutorial on how to make a 'furious' character. The were amazing, but we were really RUSHED to get the characters made and the video made in our short 45 minute session. Some groups did not get done and other groups were not interested so they only worked a few minutes and their videos were not great. It was very stressful to prep the materials for them in advance so I was happy when they said they did not want the clubs to be so structured. 

For another session last year, we learned how to make animated ghosts using the DOINK app. Patricia Fuglestad has a great tutorial and I typed up the instructions for my students. The results were great, but the level of engagement wasn't as high because I only have enough iPads for about half of my students and each kid needed quite a bit of screen time alone with the ipad to edit their film, the other kid was just sitting back watching, being bored or getting in to trouble. 

After hosting about 15ish club day sessions, I have finally found a rythm that works pretty well. I have also been asking kids what they like about other clubs and one thing they have said is that they love it when the teacher gives out candy or snacks.

​So for our final session in December, I brought each kid a candy cane. They had to work with their group to animate the candy canes, using either the Lego Movie Maker app (currently unavailable in the app store), Stop Motion app or StickBot app. Then, they had to pop their stop motion film into iMovie to add music, export it to the camera roll and share it with me on Google Drive.....all in about 45 minutes. We did our best and most of the videos made it into my compilation movie. The animations aren't perfect, but they are pretty good and the kids were engaged and happy to eat their candy canes after filming. We watched this example to get warmed up. 

​

I have a bunch of random stuff kids can use for movie making.

• Cardboard painted chroma green
• pair of green gloves
• green straws (Starbucks!)
• Small reposition-able action figures
• Stationary plastic toys from (goodwill)
• Butter and cool whip bowls with a groove cut out to use as tripods for the iPad minis
• Wooden nutcrackers from dollar tree (at Christmas)
• Wooden manikins--reposition-able and nice for movies
• Paper, markers and scissors
• Cardboard trifold boards-- I encourage them to set up their movie against wall so that the background does not have a bunch of distracting stuff messing up their movie a cardboard tri-fold is helpful as I don't have a ton of wall space
• Chroma green tape
• Slate boards (old green chalk boards) with modeling clay smooshed to the surface so that figures will stay put
• Chroma Green curtain 

Most of the time at club day, I give my students free range to make whatever type of movie they want. We did talk a little bit about story boarding. The first day of filming, the groups had to discuss their main characters, whether they wanted to use clay, paper or existing toys and whether or not they wanted their films to be green screen or not. I don't require them to create a storyboard each time, but usually the first day of movie making, so they can have a discussion before they start setting everything up. 

Here is the storyboarding template I have them use for movie planning. 
​

​Here are a few videos my students have made on my youtube channel. 
Here are some animation videos I show if we have a few extra minutes after making our movies, before it is time for dismissal. 

My club is very popular and I wish I could have more than 25 students in my club but I am limited by the amount of space and I only have 12 iPads so we are maxed out. Follow me on youtube to see a few examples of our films each month!

Last week, a friend posted a link to an article about how technology and kids brains don't mix. I wholeheartedly agree that I spend too much time tethered to my screens. Between my iPhone, iPad, computer and television, it is easy to zone out in tech, instead of being productive. 

This year, I am implementing more Teaching for Artistic Behavior strategies in my art room with regularly scheduled free-choice art center days in our regular rotation between bigger portfolio/whole group projects. 

Since I am rather new to the free choice way of thinking, I did not have very many supply-heavy centers ready when school started. Since I only offer the centers once every-other week, I also cannot change my room too much to accommodate an entire sculpture corner so I have to be creative with what centers I have open and when. Implementing a variety of centers that address the huge variety of learning styles and trying to provide stuff for kids to do that are not 'babyish' and that are still cool to my middle school students was challenging and a little daunting at the beginning of the year. 

​Generally, drawing and 'research' are always open, allowing students to thumb through packets of images, info, and drawing guides. Collage is always open. I also have a 'architecture' center which consists of legos, blocks and marbles (my students love to set up 'marble runs'), and a couple of other rotating manipulative kits that I have. 

Sometimes iPads are an option for centers, and I explained in the beginning that students should use them for setting up green screen movies, stop motion movies, designing video games, and also creating movie trailers and a few suggested apps. My iPads had Google Earth and a couple of other apps that students would just seemingly waste time on, so I ended up taking some of the apps off, in order to encourage them to create something! 

I've been pleasantly surprised that many students would rather create something with wire or popsicle sticks than numbly play an iPad app. The difficult thing about supply-heavy activities in TAB, is that I don't have storage space for large sculptures and many of those things run dry if I don't monitor how much is used on a student-by-student basis. Which is a killer for creative ideas. SO many times, students want to make something with TONS of supplies and I have to limit them in some way because I just don't have enough for everyone to do that. 

The nice thing about having technology in the rotation, is that it uses almost no supplies. The video game design app has a paper template that I keep copies of for students to use, and I have a tub of supplies for green screen movies (green gloves, some cardboard painted green, green straw from starbucks for puppet show movies, and lots of toys for students to practice using in front of the cameras.)

Each class period when centers are open, I spend a little time introducing a new special center, like chalk or stippling with ink, or styrofoam or dice games or artist trading cards. Sometimes the special center reinforces something we are doing in class or relates to seasonal subject matter like fall or halloween. Some students work on WOW pieces like weavings, which take several class periods to finish. Others always go for the special centers. Some want iPads every single time. Others work in teams to set up a marble run or build a tower or use modeling clay with the modeling clay tools. This year, following our weaving unit, I opened weaving and sewing---allowing students the opportunity to use fibers in new ways---awesome and successful centers!

If students finish a project early, iPads are usually never an option for free time activities---the only time they have free choice on the iPads are on Free choice day. On regular art days, if students finish early, I have an activity cart with books, origami paper, collage materials, drawing paper and usually some type of coloring sheet. Occasionally, I will allow a responsible and trustworthy student to look up something to reference online, but I try to limit that, because they typically spend WAY too much time searching. Often, I will find a picture and we will both agree on it, and I will let them look at it---like if they want to see an eagle landing or something specific like that. 

We have used iPads to enhance 2 projects this year. Once, we used them to take a 'selfie' and upload it to google drive so I could print it for each student. The second time we used the iPads, students worked in pairs to enhance their understanding of 1 and 2 point perspective and design a structure using perspective. I gave them links and vides and photos to help explain perspective, after we had practiced as a class in our sketchbooks---some kids just weren't getting it, so I was a little desperate to find different ways to show them how it worked. I also let them look at some visuals of structures, like mansions, tree houses, castles, and other places as inspiration for their structures. I had a bunch of examples on a smore flyer. (More about that lesson later).  It was nice to have TONS of visuals at their fingertips, as I do not have a bunch of prints of those types of images.

The week of Halloween, we had a weird shortened schedule for two of our sessions, so I checked out the chrome book cart from the computer lab and had students take a Kahoot quiz. The quiz is super interactive and it is a great formative assessment tool. Since we were only together for 20-30 minutes, it was nice to play a review game instead of trying to get out supplies and then spend a bunch of time cleaning up. We were productive and it was super fun and engaging. 

Below is a collection of images I have taken throughout the semester. Most of the photos are of 'WOW' pieces, in which students are very proud to show off their work, and they spend multiple art sessions on the project. Other photos are in progress of the centers in action. 

 I decided to survey my students to get their opinions about the technology aspect in our class after reading the article I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Since we have used the technology a little bit this semester, they have experienced it in our class and have been exposed to it as I described above.  Also, I should mention that the biggest majority of my 5th-6th grade students do NOT have a laptop assigned to them, they get about ONE hour of computer lab a week, and they use a classroom computer to take AR tests.

 When students arrive to my class, I always have them fill out a slip---sometimes they draw, sometimes we review, other times I ask them questions. Here is an info graphic with the question on my poll. I took their slipps, counted all the yeses/nos and compiled some of my favorite responses to the 'Why and Why Not.' The results are below. Please take the time to read some of the responses. I was very surprised by what they said.