Below is an iMovie that I have made, creating a trailor for the story of Noah’s Ark.
It is relatively simple to use. It gives you a guide to create your own trailor. You can either get images from the internet, or take your own whilst producing it. You can edit all the captions to say what you wish, but it gives children a nice guide of what to write for those who may not be able to generate their own.
Music is already a part of the movie trailor, but this can be changed if the children so wish (the adding of music could be part of the differentiation of the lesson, that children have to produce a complete trailor first, and then once successful at that, can go on to change the music).
It is more more suitable for KS2 children, as it can be quite fiddly to get used to, but is simple once you get the hang of it.
The only annoying thing, is the amount of pictures you have to have, which makes it time consuming to gather a wide range of picture (we couldn’t seem to find a way to delete them).
Our resource fits nicely into the curriculum, through using technology to create a trailor for a religious story. It could be used as an introduction to the story, before the children then learn the story in full – it will engage the children straight away.
Make Dice Lite
This is an app which can be used for a wide range of subject, but the example that i have done links into RE. The app allows you to create dice with different words on each face of the dice. You can have as many dice as you wish. Then by moving your ipad, the dice will roll around and eventually stop. These can then be used as a starting point.
The dice could help children to begin writing a story, as it could give them the characters, the setting etc. (especially useful for those children who say “I don’t know what to write about“)
In my example (right) I have got two die. One contains the six major religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Judaism) and the other has a topic (Beliefs, dress, leaders/founders, sacred text, symbols and festivals). My own idea for using this would be to split the children into small groups, let them ‘roll’ the dice, which will determine which religion and specifically what about that religion they will research and then get each group to present their findings back to the class.
I feel that using this simple app makes giving out topics that little bit more exciting, totally random and very fair. Obviously if a group has the dice land on the exact same things, then you can get the children to roll the dice again. The draw back is that there are 36 options (for a 2 dice combination) and it can make it difficult if there were specific things you wanted children to research.
When creating the dice, it is the simplest thing ever! The template is automatically there, you select a colour and type in each box. You then just have to press the + sign to add a new dice – couldn’t be simpler or quicker!
Both of the above ideas are very simple – something that appeals to me greatly! They are quick to create but can add that WOW factor into your lesson which I feel is very important.
Both of the above can be found on the Resource Bank