2009 TIE Award Winner - Tess Ewart

Several years ago, I saw a presentation on the Frames software at the National School Board Association's T + L2 conference and I was hooked! I was looking for something I could do to differentiate my lessons to challenge my eighth grade gifted students more and advance their learning.

Knowing that businesses are looking for 21st Century skills in employees such as creativity, collaboration and technology skills, I wanted to promote this with my students. I wanted to do something "new" and for what I had in mind, the typical presentation tools would not be good enough. Frames software was the answer to this dilemma!

I bought a Clay Animation Kit and picked out a few of my brightest students and asked them do an animation on the animals that went up into space at the beginning of the Space Race. I was extremely pleased with the results! It is definitely true that clay animation challenges students to not only know the content but to determine the best way to illustrate that content while working with another group member therefore working on content knowledge and interpersonal skills. Showing the final animations to the class generated a great deal of interest in the other students. Comments like "when will we get to do that" were heard often!

I started looking at my curriculum to see where I could include other animation projects. Many of the gifted students initially groaned about having to do the animations since it wouldn't be as easy for them as other presentations. However, by the end of the process, they were loving the options and the chroma key feature. Students have now created animations that show erosion and deposition by wind, water, ice and gravity; the relationship between plate tectonics, earthquakes and volcanoes; the differences between asteroids, comets and meteoroids; and digital stories. I'm still thinking of more topics for animations!

Frames has helped to challenge all students since it is very easy to differentiate my lessons. Working on clay animations has the students thinking critically about content and working on their interpersonal skills. Frames and the animations are a tremendous motivator for the students and keeps them engaged in the lesson.