This year, students work as artistic collaborators to create their own original movie. They become the playwrights, set designers, costume designers, and performers. The goal is to incorporate their many disparate ideas into one semi-cohesive narrative, in which all students contribute and shine. This project hopes to honor First graders’ uninhibited creativity and endless imaginations, while also teaching collaboration, listening, patience, and creating a final product.

The project started with each student inventing their own animal character – some were composites of two or three animals and some were completely original. The students developed a character walk, a character voice, and a costume design for their character. Each class then brainstormed how to put all of these different characters into one narrative. I transcribed the discussion as the students seamlessly built off one another’s ideas. The students would improvise a new scene every class and the following class I would bring in the script version of what they had created. We rehearsed with the script for several weeks. Students used their preliminary costume designs to create their actual costumes using markers, glue, construction paper and paper plates. When we finally began our filming process, the students knew their story forwards and backwards (sometimes better than I did!) Throughout this ambitious process, students learned how to be “quiet on set” and patient as we took many takes of each scene. I would edit the movie as we went, so each week I showed last week’s material. Students gave comments and feedback and always had many suggestions. I’m so proud of the work they accomplished by working together and I know they are very excited to share what they’ve created.