End of the School Year Project

Let's Celebrate and Reflect!

I would like to recognize my final second grade class before I took on a new role in my school district. I have been able to be their technology integrator for the last three years after being their second grade teacher. It has been wonderful to be a part of their growth during four years of their educational experience. Next year those students will be attending the middle school and I will certainly miss them. As a tribute I remixed a video I created with my second grade students three years ago. Back then I was using an older version of iMovie and the video did not come out very good... Once it was rendered for uploading to YouTube the faces were washed away. Check out the technology from three years ago! Now our classrooms are full of iPads!!!

What We Did

I also would like to mention what we did as a class to create this project because it was a very enjoyable end of year experience for all of us and it may be something you would like to do with your students. First, I had all of my students reflect on what they learned during their second grade experience and write down everything they remembered learning. Some of the students had a very long list. That made me feel good about my accomplishments and theirs. Then I had students suggest their favorites and as a class we tallied how many students had that same learning experience on their own lists. Using their math skills, the students figured out what the top 20ish were. Next, I recorded students talking about or acting out each of the top learning experiences. I then put all of the clips together into an iMovie. Lastly, we invited parents in for an end of the year slideshow and as a finale we watched the short movie. I also posted the video on my blog for family and friends that could not visit the classroom on the day that we celebrated the end of second grade. For those of you unfamiliar with iMovie, here is a link to a quick video created by astonishing12 on YouTube.

What You Could Do

• For teachers who have access to more than one recording device, you could have students shoot their own footage and then together make the final cut video. 

• Students could look through all of their digital files on their iPads or laptops and find their favorites for a final video. This can go hand in hand with students making sure that everything that they want to save has been moved to their Google account, Evernote account, or other form of digital storage.