Making monsters come to life

Esperanza Charter School

6th/8th grade, Visual Art & ELL

Ms. Andrea / Ms. Schick

In Ms. Schick’s English Language Learning classes, students were learning words for body parts—eyes, arms, ears, etc.—and had previously learned words for colors and numbers. In our KID smART classes, we decided to deepen our understanding of these vocabulary words by creating stop motion animations, making monsters come to life!

The first week, each student chose 2-3 body parts and collaged them out of construction paper. The next week, we filmed our stop motions by bringing all body parts together, taking photo after photo to make one collaborative classroom monster. During week three, students wrote scripts describing the body parts they constructed and animated, i.e. “I have one red hand and one pink hand.” Our fourth and final week, we recorded the students performing their lines, added as voiceovers to the film footage.

Ms. Schick really liked this project because it combined reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The students enjoyed learning English through stop motion animation!

Creative learning at Esperanza is supported by the Patrick F. Taylor Foundation.