Jamie used the Tutorials chapter in the Everyone Can Create Video project guide to help students learn about imagery and bring descriptions from a novel to life.
In this activity, Jamie’s students learned how to recreate a passage from a class text using animation. Students started their project by identifying examples of similes and metaphors in descriptive passages from the class text they were reading.
They used clay, cardboard, and a stop-motion animation app to make a video that illustrated their chosen passage.
Students then created a graphic overlay using Keynote on a wide (16:9) slide. A green shape was used as a placeholder for their animation. They exported their slide as an image to add to their iMovie project.
Students brought their work together in iMovie by adding their stop‑motion video, using the Green Screen feature to bring in the overlay they made in Keynote, and finally recording their voice reading the passage from the class text.
Using stop‑motion animation to bring stories to life allows students to visualise descriptive language and understand texts on a deeper level.
Jamie Clark
Get the resources.
Download the “Bringing Language to Life” template for Keynote and try this activity with your students.