This week we went to Marysville Elementary School and we created stop motion videos. When we first got there we got to meet with the principle of the school, Stacey DeCosse, who gave us an amazing speech about what the reality of teaching is nowadays with how kids are regulated. Then we went to Ms. Romeo’s classroom where her class as well as Mrs. Sharpe’s class were waiting for us. We were given our groups and our teaching partners and we then went off into Mrs. Sharpe’s room across the hall and we got started with our project.

For this in-situ we were creating stop-motion videos with the students. We first started with getting to know our students in our group, we had them introduce themselves and then their desk pets. After that we reintroduced ourselves since when we did it the first time there were sixteen different adults all introducing themselves at once, which as a little kid can be very overwhelming. Then we got to planning our stop-motion, using a story board template, the one linked isn’t exact to the one we used but it is very similar. It was so cool to watch our students collaborate and bounce ideas off of each other and decide on how they were going to make all their ideas work together. Once we decided what we were doing it was so cool to watch the kids take over and make the project their own and see their ideas come to life.

Coming back to this school was so cool and overwhelming because this was my elementary school and Mrs. Romeo was my grade two and three teacher. I loved being in her class. When Mrs. DeCosse was giving her speech on how Mrs. Romeo teaches and how she touches students’ lives all I could think about was how much I agree. Deciding to go into teaching was a decision I made off of my passion for working with kids and the relationships I made with my students during my entire academic career. Mrs. Romeo was such a kind teacher and made me feel so seen and getting to see her work through her current students was so cool. It brought me so much joy to know she’s still inspiring kids. Getting to see her work made me remember the type of teacher I want to be and the relationship I want with my kids. It was also so cool to see the kids eager to work together and how smoothly they collaborated and took turns sharing all the roles. This whole experience was so inspiring in so many different ways for how I want to lead my classroom and what I want my classroom environment to look and feel like.

There were so many pros to this experience there is only one thing that I would change, which is how to go about the lesson portion. I think it is a super cool and fun project to do but if it was an activity I was bringing into my classroom there are some things I would add. I think this is a great project to do to help teach plot lines and storytelling. I would start with teaching about beginnings, middles, and ends. As well as characters and settings and how important the little details can be. I would probably spend a whole class on how to make a story and create their storyboards and have a separate lesson on creating the videos. That way you can incorporate a deeper meaning to the lesson and the students can go more in-depth with the stories they create. I think as an overall activity this was great and the kids and my classmates enjoyed it.

This reflection was made using the Gibbs Reflective Learning Cycle.