‘We’re Going on a Shape Hunt’ - Using Clips Scaffolds in an Early Years Classroom

Clips would have to be one of my most favourite apps to use with early learners (a close second after Camera 📷 of course!). It is often a forgotten app - one that you might spot on your home screen as you boot your iPad for the first time, but most likely don’t explore. I have never met an educator though who doesn’t ‘oooh’ and ‘aaah’ as they start to explore the power and opportunities behind this amazing app. 

Clips is an easy-to-use movie-making app, packed full of fantastic features, easily accessible by learners of any age. Learners start by recording movie snippets (or… Clips 🙌🏻) that seamlessly stitch together without the need for editing or importing. They then have the option to add stickers to draw attention, Live Titles to show their spoken words as text, music to add to the theme and impressive animated posters to complete the movie package. For more information about putting together your own movie in Clips, please see the Everyone Can Create Early Learners Teacher Guide.

Here is a Clips movie created by a young learner to show her understanding of 2D Shapes. How many of the features mentioned above can you spot?

One great feature of Clips that is often unknown, is that you can create a scaffold for a movie task to share with students in an editable Clips project format. This would start with an instructions Clip (to be deleted afterwards) as well as some animated posters and a range of ‘Clips’ featuring prompts and reflective questions. Simply AirDrop this to your students' iPads and have them capture their own video and photo content to complete the task. For our youngest learners, this takes away some of the more complex steps required in adding the extra features.

One project I love to complete with my foundation students is creating a movie about going on a shape hunt. We pretend we are shape detectives and search the environment for everyday objects that look like known shapes. 

The video below shows how I would put together the scaffold for this task, and how I would share this with my students. You can download a copy of this scaffold at the end of this post. 

 

How could you use a Clips scaffold in your classroom?

More information

Everyone Can Create Teachers Guide Early Learners

How to use Clips - Apple Education Center

Attachments

9 replies

November 05, 2022

This is such a great resource. I really love how students are able to easily and creatively show what they know and understand about shapes. Thanks so much for sharing this resource. I will be sharing it with all the early years teachers I know.



November 08, 2022

I love this Rachel! What a fantastic way to consolidate learning. I also love the use of visuals, audio and Live titles! These features really add so much value for students. Thank you! :0)

November 09, 2022

Very fun shape hunt Rachel - and fantastic instructions! Thank you! I really like your idea of scaffolding Clips and airdropping as a Clips project.

November 10, 2022

This is such a great activity, Rachel! 🤩

So many skills embedded within it, and could easily be adapted to suit other age groups and contexts too! 🙌

November 19, 2022

I've never thought about creating Clips templates to share with students, but it is an awesome idea! It would be helpful for learners of all ages who may be unfamiliar with the app and would allow them to focus on lesson concepts, rather than app funcationality. Thanks for sharing!

December 06, 2022

Thanks for sharing this great idea Rachel! Sharing Clips scaffolds as Project files opens up so many opportunities for students!

May 18, 2023

Rachel, I love the idea of creating a Clips scaffolds for early learners! Thanks for sharing.😁

May 18, 2023

Thank you so much, this is great

May 24, 2023

Thanks for sharing! Awesome stuff! Love how Clips can be used in so many creative and fun ways for a student to showcase what they know!

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