Stop Animation, Art history and Literacy

Students will choose an arthistorical period randomly from a hat. Art historical periods will be written in synopsis.

Students will research the art historical period and choose one or more artists and their lives to illustrate in the stop animation cartoon.

Students will be given pre-k- 1st grade standards that must be addressed for the visual arts in addition to the Common Core in NYC. Students will tailor their research to how the information should be addressed via the standards.

Students will Research: Art historical period, its history, a specific artist from that period, culture of the artist, the area of birth if applicable, what inspired them, their partners if any, their medical associations if neccessary, their family inheritance, time period issues if applicable, their deaths, the inspirations post death and the legend they leave behind.

Students will watch a demo of group work with a student and I and see the collaboration and movement of the necessary materials.

Students will then create a Story Board (This is essentially a visual book)
Students will be taking their research and will illustrate the story of their artists life. Since each frame will be created by moving pieces of paper many times to form movement, students will have to illustrate their ideas with the idea that the things on the paper will move and that each frame will take at least 30 pictures in order for it to look like its moving and when fast forwarded will move seamlessly into each other. The story must illustrate in no more then 10 frames.

Photography: Students will be told that each frame will be able to seamlessly move into the next: For example to create a snow storm you would take an image of each paper moving to make snow fall to the ground in order to make the frame become stop animation savy. This is essentially a moving collage. (The paper looks like it is moving because with each frame a piece of paper is moved and a photograph is taken.)

After each piece of paper is moved and photographed and each frame is successfully illustrated, students will put them into IMovie and fastfoward all the images to create one frame.

Students will add sound and voice, special effects and text when applicable with IMovie.

Based on the standards given to them for pre-K through 2nd grade and the grade they chose to illustrate for, students will create 4 discussion questions for teachers to use in their classrooms post watching their stop anime film on an art historical period.

After all movies are finished, Art Historical Periods will be presented in time line order. Students will learn about the Art Historical Periods together while becoming familiar with the time period and one artist or more associated with each. Students will critique each video based on research, aesthetics, craftsmanship, creativity and motivation. Students will critique their project partner based on effort, support and problem solving. Students will share the questions they have created for educators to accompany their stop animation projects.

In the end I would like to have student work published in video for students in pre- K- 1st grade so they also can learn about artists their history and their legacies. These Stop Animation videos will highly engage pre-K through 1st grade while teaching literacy and promoting speech. Each animation will be accompanied by questions differentiated for pre-k through 1st grade.