Magic Box Productions

Mrs. Strent, our English as a New Language (ENL) teacher, and a Teaching Artist from Magic Box Productions, guides students through the mastery of video, photography and digital techniques to explore and document their world, and to deepen and demonstrate understanding of academic subjects such as language arts, social studies and science.  The program strengthens English Language Learner's (ELL's) language skills in listening, speaking and writing through hands-on project-based learning as they are introduced to the basic concepts and terminologies of photography and stop-motion animation through a curriculum designed to build vocabulary, creativity and observational and critical thinking skills.  The curriculum is focused on the building blocks of sequential art and how to turn those pieces into an animated sequence.  The residency encourages student reflection through comparisons, defending choices, presenting evidence and persuasion. Skills include story-boarding, taking digital images, image manipulation and adding speech to the animation.  Students worked collaboratively to create a series of short, stop-motion animations inspired by the story, Lon Po Po.