Journey to SPACE!!!

On the back of the success of the adverts for WaterAid that I had set for one of my Year 5 classes in Spring 1, I now had the opportunity to create another fantastic advert project with the other Year 5 children in Spring 2.

Their Spring 1 topic of 'Water' linked really well to the WaterAid charity idea but they had finished that topic and had moved onto learning about 'Space'. I thought this would be a terrific opportunity to link 'Space' to the creation of an advert and as one of our main tools was using green screen, it was the perfect chance to film some zero gravity floating!

Around the time of planning the lessons, Virgin Galactic was in the news as it had completed another test run of it's spaceship. Virgin Galactic are aiming to be the first company to take regular people into space on a commercial flight.

I did some research into what inspirational videos were available and showed the story of Virgin Galactic. I had decided that this would be the perfect brand for Year 5's advert.

I set out a lesson structure for the project:

Lesson 1: Research & Planning
Lesson 2 : Filming including using DoInk Green Screen
Lesson 3: Finish off/tidy up filming
Lesson 4: Editing using Movie Maker
Lesson 5: Finish Editing and save
Lesson 6: Watch adverts and evaluate

The first film I showed them to get them excited and inspired is below. Like before, they took notes of key phrases, vocabulary, facts and ideas for their advert. 

The children then set off in groups of three to combine their ideas together and create a collective storyboard for their advert. They used YouTube and Virgin Galactic's website to help them.

The following week we began filming using iPads and Green Screens. 

Here are links to the 2 Green Screens I bought: GREEN SCREEN

and the 2 astronaut costumes I bought: ASTRONAUT COSTUME

Both were very reasonably priced and will be used again and again. 

I found that the best technique for filming the zero gravity scenes will be to put both screens on the floor and get the children to spin and roll around, keeping away from the edge. They will be filmed from above and then the footage will be muted and slowed down in the edit. 

After the children filmed their scenes, they edited the backgrounds using Do Ink Green Screen App. An absolute MUST for educational apps!

The third stage was editing the films which we did using Windows Movie Maker on the PC's. This is where children could trim their videos, reorganise the order, add music, animations, transitions, fades, zooms, titles, captions, slow-mo effects and add in some extra videos and pictures I had saved for them of Virgin Galactic spaceships. The music was all downloaded from LGFL's Audio Network.

Finally we watched them and evaluated our learning and successes. Children shared what they liked about each other's adverts and what could have been improved.

Below is our class advert (a combination of clips from different groups) and below that are 6 adverts created by the children. They had so much fun with this project. It was a superb way to engage them and enrich their learning of 'Space' and the future of space travel.

Class Advert

Group Adverts

Please comment below or on my Twitter and Facebook to let the children know what you think of their Virgin Galactic projects and if you know Richard Branson, tell him we've got his marketing covered!