Introductory Video

Writing and Animation

Project Plan for Grade 10, English Language Arts

Prepared by Andrew Davis

OVERVIEW & GOALS

Writing and Animation is a student-centric, collaborative, creative project.  Students will work in pairs to develop a narrative script and code an accompanying animation in Scratch.  The goals are to sharpen your own existing skills as well as develop new skills for your partner and yourself.

OBJECTIVES

1. Develop a narrative
2. Code an animation
3. Share your strength with your partner
4. Learn from your partner’s strength

MATERIALS

1. Pen and paper
2. Computer
3. Internet connectivity
4. Patience
5. Tutorials and guides

ACTIVITY

The majority of this lesson is student-centric, and the teacher will function mostly as a facilitator/guide.  The students are divided ideally in half between proficiency in writing and proficiency in coding/animating.

The students will work as a team to develop their animation and script.  They will have to communicate, but they do not necessarily need to work together 100% of the time.  Ideally, the students would learn from one another’s strengths.  However, both coding and writing can be intensely attention-demanding, and so the students don’t need to be tied together throughout the process. Obviously, their animation must be of their script, and so the hope is that the collaboration and any transfer of skill will be organic.

At the end of the unit, the students’ work will be displayed in a fair-style setting where their two creations are displayed side-by-side.

Where do I Start?

As we come together in teams, we find that everyone brings their own experiences and abilities with writing and coding.  In your team, you are the expert in your field.  You start with what you know!  I have compiled a list of books, videos, and online guides to help you develop your own skills in both content areas as well as assist your partner in developing theirs!  This is not a contest.  Don’t worry about learning a specific skill.  Just develop what skills you need to create the best story and animation you can.

THE BASICS

Writing a story involves the creation of characters within a setting who encounter some sort of conflict and work towards a resolution.  There are lots of different ways to write a story, but all stories should have some shade of each of these elements.  Feel free to be creative.  If you are struggling to come up with the perfect story, maybe work on animating a rough draft of your story and let that process influence your writing.  This is a collaborative project, so work together to tackle issues, and don’t be afraid to use your teacher as a resource.

Animating in Scratch is all about creating or finding characters (called sprites in Scratch), backgrounds, effects, and then sequencing their appearance and movement with lines of code.  This can be daunting for the uninitiated, but just take it one step at a time.  I have included some great basic tutorials below, and if you have enough time, there are some really in-depth guides to making your animations pop!

Remember, this is an activity designed to get you thinking about story writing and learning about animating with code: this is not a contest between you and the other teams.  I want you to engage with the learning process and have fun showing off what you’ve learned!  Take your time, do your best, and ask for help when you get stuck.

Student Checklist

The instructor should keep the project as open-ended as possible to allow for student creativity.  However, some students benefit from a little general direction on where to start.  Here are some things to consider when starting out:

• Who is going to do the writing?
• Who is going to do the animating?
• Should we start with the animation or the script?
• Should we start with the setting or the characters?
• How can we incorporate theme and setting into our code?
• Should the writing and animation be exactly the same, or should they complement one another?
• If a certain element works really well in one medium but not the other, should we cut it entirely from both?  Is it ok to have in just one? Can we modify it somehow? Can we show it in a different way?
• How much time will be realistic to spend on tweaking each piece?

Writing Resources

Take Joy: A Writer’s Guide to Loving the Craft, by Jane Yolen

This resource will be most valuable to you if you feel stuck in the writing process.  While there are good tips and tricks for the actual crafting of your story, Ms. Yolen truly shines in her ability to get you excited about writing again if you find yourself running into walls.  There should be several copies in the classroom.

Keys for Writers, Ann Raimes

This book will be your technical writing resource.  Run into a specific problem? Look it up in here.  With guides on the writing process, document design, style, common errors, mechanics, and even a section for multilingual/ESL writers, this book is like a drill to drive you through the walls, as opposed to Take Joy which sort of carries you over them.

Coding and Animating Resources

Scratch 2.0 - Create and Animation in Scratch 2015-2016, BESKid - BES Computer Lab Resources

This YouTube series produced by Bayfield Elementary School in Bayfield, Colorado is great guide for animating in Scratch.  There are five total videos that can get you started on the right track, or be used as a reference throughout your process.  The videos range from three to twelve minutes and cover a range of topics including creating a backdrop, manipulating your sprites, calculating distances in Scratch, and other troubleshooting for bugs you may encounter.

YouTube in general could be a great resource for you, as you will be able to search by the specific problem you are encountering, whether it is animating your sprites or coding their movement or fleshing out your characters in the script.  If you want your sprites to blink, wave their arm, or some other fine motor skill, Scratch Tutorial Animation by the Programming Tutorial Channel is an in-depth example of how to take your animation to the next level.

The Scratch Wiki is a community of Scratch users who have posted over 1,000 articles on everything Scratch.  This is another great resource to search for your specific challenges.

VERIFICATION (Are we on track?)

1. Is the narrative well-written?
2. Is the animation smooth?
3. Am I teaching?
4. Am I learning?

ASSESSMENT

This is a collaborative, creative, student-centric project.  Students must be graded on the development of their productions as objectively as possible in order to prove corellation to the standards.  However, we as the instructor of this module are really evaluating whether learning is happening within the groups.  This is not an animation or writing contest.

With this in mind, we will use the following rubric for assessment:

	Insufficient Effort	Sufficient Effort	Exceptional Effort
Story Development	The writing student casually wrote the story	The writing student primarily wrote the story with feedback from the coding student	The coding student primarily wrote the story with feedback from the writing student
Code Development	The coding student casually put together the animation	The coding student animated the story with feedback from the writing student	The writing student animated the story with feedback from the coding student
Helping your partner learn	The instruction was overly prescriptive, or the instructing student “showed” his partner by performing their task for them.	Students displayed patience with one another provided effective feedback or instruction	Students encouraged their partners to step out of their comfort zone and supported them in trying something new.
Learning from your partner	Students did not ask questions of their partners, or did not take advice well or at all	Students received feedback from their partner and put it into practice	Students actively sought assistance and received it graciously
Final Outcome (CCSS.ELA.9-10.7)	The script and animation do not or barely relate	The writing and the animation made sense together or complemented on another	Students effectively used the different mediums to highlight similarities and differences in storytelling
ISTE 4a Innovative Designer ISTE 4a (continued)	Students did not seem to accomplish anything deliberately	Students followed a design process to create content and overcome obstacles	Students worked together to develop their own design process before engaging in the creation of their content
ISTE 6b	Students do not a ppropriately cite resources	Students effectively use and cite existing content	Students effectively modify or repurpose existing content with proper citation

EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS

1. Common Core
1. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" and Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus).
2. ISTE
1. 4a: Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
2. 6b: Students create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.

Argument for Connection of CC and ISTE Standards to "Writing and Animation"

"Writing and Animation" is a unit of instruction designed to cross-develop student skills under two learning standards: the Common Core State Standards and the International Society for Technology in Education.  The lesson plan divides the class into even groups of proficiencies: reading and writing or coding and animating.  Students will form teams of two, one member from each group, and develop both a narrative script as well as an accompanying animation to be displayed side by side as the final deliverable.

Whether they are working on the handwritten side or the code writing side, the students will sharpen their skills in the following areas:

1.) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.7: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden's "Musée des Beaux Arts" and Breughel's Landscape with the Fall of Icarus).

Whichever medium the students develop first, they need to make decisions for the other regarding how they handle their story, themes, characters and settings.  One can not make decisions without thinking about and analyzing the material.  Perhaps they are finding it technically difficult to animate a certain action or scene.  Perhaps they drew an amazing location and are struggling to capture its beauty in words!  Perhaps they are able to incorporate theme in an extremely subtle way within their code.  They will be creating the representation of a subject in two different artistic mediums, and they will be developing this skill.

2.) ISTE 4a: Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.

While this is a technology standard, these skills also pertain to the writing portion of the project.  Students can start with the script and animate it, or create an animation and flesh it out in writing.  Either way, they will need to come up with a story, develop it, invent characters and locations, and connect these elements to the other medium.  Whether or not this process is deliberate for the first portion, the teams will have another set of challenges and a second opportunity to use this design process when they take their existing idea and fit it within another medium.

3.) 6b: Students create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.

Students will be writing their own stories but, again, this is a technology standard.  Animating with code can be extremely time-consuming and plain difficult as it is; it would be too much to ask students to draw their own sprites (characters) or backdrops by hand if they do not already possess this skill.  If a student finds materials online, whether drawings or chunks of animating code for a technically challenging scene, they will still need to somehow bind them to their story, as well as properly cite the resource.

"Writing and Animation" allows students to work in a field they feel proficient in, enrich and share their skills in that area to their partner, as well as keep their learning fresh by developing another set of skills.  This project provides ample opportunity to engage with these three learning standards.

Student Example

By Andre Perez and Drew Davis

Forever Foes

(Courtesy of Andre Perez)

(Open in new window and enjoy both pieces)

(Perhaps turn the volume down)

They faced one another on the boardwalk.  Prepared.  Boats and islands shimmering in the hazy distance.  The birds had fled, perhaps sensing the impending energies.  Someone had to make the first move...

He struck! Dashing across the rickety planks and landing a blow before his nemesis registered the movement.  The stricken flew through the air, across the beach, flying backwards from the force of the blow until he landed, skidding across the sidewalk of a park. 

He gathered himself, more hurt by his pride at being hit than the actual blow.  He channeled his frustration and gathered his energy.  He was ready to return the favor.

He flew threw the park, across the beach, and struck back.  He floated, gloating, in the air.

"So; it will be an even match."

The initiator, enraged, also revealed a more powerful form and took to the skies to deliver a devastating combo to his enemy.  Sparks flew and lighting crashed as they both screamed, enraged, at the heavens.  This power struggle had only just begun.

They clashed, tiny titans in the night, a blur of speed and force never before seen and at times, still not seen to this day, as they threw punches, kicks, whirlwinds and storms, venom and flame, earthquakes and fury.  

And then, as abruptly as it had began, it ended.  Only who had ended it?

The aggressor knelt, defeated. "Bye, my son. You're a good fighter.  Keep it up."

And then he was gone, leaving the son to ponder his fate, and his destiny.