Afrikaans: School of Rock

Afrikaans:  School of Rock (Music Videos)

Gustav Labon stated that an education system is of more importance to a country than its government.  The driving force behind our project is the need for proper and inspiring language education.  

Most educators will agree that the reason why many learners struggle with mathematical problems, history essay writing or long questions in general is because they do not understand the question or because they find it problematic to organize their thought process or express themselves using proper language.  

The grade 8’s had to create a music video by matching images to the lyrics of a song or they had the choice to translate a song and sing it themselves.  This was a perfect opportunity to be creative, improve their comprehension, vocabulary, computer literacy, visual literacy and be entertained while learning.  

One of my main aims was to break away from those things that they were use to in language classes.  Students had to find a song the liked.  Thereafter they had to interpret and understand the lyrics.  They had to understand the words and the meaning of the song.  This was followed by matching the proper images to the lyrics and being creative or translating an English song to Afrikaans.  

Throughout the process they were using technology to learn Afrikaans, enjoy Afrikaans and to be resourceful in Afrikaans.  The words and pictures were embedded in their minds and the project addressed their experience world every step of the way.  Suddenly their second language became relevant to them because they were having fun and using technology at the same time.  

Afrikaans Movies

Our grade 9’s must create their own movies at the end of the year based on a fairy tale.  This year students were also allowed to base their movies on other movies they have watched.  Students must bring their own interpretation to the table.  Students work in groups with different characters, props and settings.  This project requires group work, delegation and creativity.  

   

Learning Meiosis hands-on!

Cell division in Life Sciences is best learnt by getting students to 'recreate' the stages of the process in a practical, hands-on way.

Using playdough, each stage of meiosis can be modelled, annotated and then photographed. These images can then be imported into Photostory or Movie Maker and then edited. Narration, effects and music can be added to complete the digital story and the project saved as a movie file. Editing the timing of each digital image can create an animated sequence representing the stages of this type of cell division.

This type of activity supports visual learners and can be a wonderful way in which to reinforce concepts and enhance understanding. It also means that the completed movie can be shared, uploaded to a blog and used for revision purposes in the future. Collaboration, creativity, organisation and critical thinking are all 21st Century Skills that can be effectively implemented in this excercise.

The videos below are examples of the movies that were created in this way.