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. 

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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. 

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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. 
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​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!

I randomly stumbled across this post about a newspaper shoe challenge and realized it was the perfect way to use up some extra newspaper I had accumulated at the end of the year. I numbered off each student and placed them into random groups of 3-4 and told them that they had one class period to design a shoe that fit on one person on the team, using only newspaper and tape (eventually allowed a little yarn and staples too). I gave them a little sketch paper, scissors and pencils.

Each year, I try to implement some sort of group activity. I had a poster of paper folding techniques, most did not utilize it. So I started demonstrating at least how to roll one big sheet into a cylinder, and then use that to form the main parts of the shoe, that helped. I also mentioned that if they were making a high-heel, they should build up the heel so it would hold up in the fashion shoe. Also, they could make 2 shoes if they had time.

They had to figure the rest out for themselves. This was a great team-building activity!

I allowed them to work until the last ten minutes, when we had  fashion show and I awarded the winning team with art trophies (mini pencils spray painted gold). The fashion show consisted of me playing Call Me Maybe into my bull horn (via my iPhone) while kids walked the runway (a couple of rugs) in front of the class to show off their shoe. I picked the winner based partly in design and partly on teamwork.