A Big Idea - Claymations

Published on Tue 4 Aug 2009

Firstly, what is a ‘claymation’?

Put together some clay animals or people or birds, bend their bodies just a little bit, take a photo, bend some more, take another photo. Keep doing it. Then edit all your photos into a sequence and you will have animated your clay objects. You will have made a claymation.
 
Secondly, what is the BIG IDEA?
 
In the hands of Kathy Oliver, Title One Reading Specialist in Burke County, North Carolina, claymations have become a BIG IDEA because she has used the process to create a Letterland teaching strategy that:

•    reaches the hardest to teach,
•    creates opportunities for cross curriculum learning,
•    uses technology,
•    promotes cooperation between older and younger children,
•    benefits both.

How do the different age groups cooperate? 

They work in pairs. Each younger child chooses a different digraph to animate, makes the two Letterland characters out of clay, and bends the clay, little by little. The older student does the camera sequence and then records the child’s voice telling the story which explains the new sound.

For each pair, the final product is a 15 to 20 second animation of the digraph together with its brief story explanation that teaches the sound. Multiply that process by the number of key digraphs needed to crack the code in reading and you can see the reach of Kathy’s claymation project. (The older students are chosen from amongst ones who are still struggling with their reading, often because they never fully grasped how to crack the alphabetic code in their primary years, and the younger ones are chosen because they have fallen behind their classmates).
 
Results and benefits
 
Both age groups look forward to their sessions together. Every younger and older child becomes keen to see and hear all the other children’s claymations (the animations are quick to replay). The younger children are all motivated by the older ones’ involvement. The older students grow in confidence through the opportunity to help the younger ones. Both age groups learn all the digraph sounds and something about the art of animation. Both age groups’ reading and spelling improves because they all have a new command of the English alphabetic code.
 
Congratulations

Hats off to Kathy Oliver for developing this wonderful big idea!

Your ideas

Letterland has inspired creative ideas in many teachers. If you have had some innovative ideas; big or small, that you would like to share, write to Lyn Wendon ( lyn@letterland.com). She would love to hear from you.