Focus:
- To encourage talk and collaboration, working as a team to create a short story or poem.
- Bringing different type so media together to create a cartoon.
- Different ways to tell stories and poems.
Suitable for:
Key Stage 1 or 2
What you need:
Toontastic on Ipad
What you do:
Children are able to make their own cartoon utilizing the iPads. They will begin deciding what their cartoon is going to be about or they can choose to continue the started cartoon animation preset by the teacher. The children then have different backgrounds to choose from and can draw their own if they desire, this allows them to make it personal. Children can then select from the preset characters which they want to use for their animation. They can manipulate these as they please and select a piece of music which fits the mood of the scene. Using fine motor skills they are able to move the characters onto the screen, while narrating the story or poem.
Learning benefits:
Children are learning how you can use different media to create types of role play. Their fine motor skills are being developed by using their fingers to operate the iPad whilst manipulating the characters. They are also developing their communication and language, developing new vocabulary and learning from peers. They are improving their speaking and listening skills and using expression to narrate their cartoon animation. This helps to increase their confidence and self-esteem as they are able to record themselves where they are comfortable (in small groups), they don’t have to speak in front of the whole class.
Taking it further:
Give the children the start of the poem, our example of ‘A pirate’s life for me’ and allow the children to complete the poem by adding further verses to the poem and creating more cartoon animation to accompany their new verses. The children could create their own short story, which they may like to plan out first. Over a week the children could then share ideas and compare their cartoons to peer assess.
By Abi, Louise and Rachel