"Movie" Posters - 4th Grade

The fourth graders at one of my buildings are creating their own fractured fairy tales in Drama class.  They took a fairy tale and altered it slightly to make a new story.  The students will be performing their creations in December and I thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if the students created movie posters to hang in the cafetorium during their show?"  So I took my idea to the drama teacher and she was really excited about the idea - so off to planning my lesson.

I created a slideshow with many kid friendly movies - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Goonies, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc, the Emperor's New Groove, etc.  I asked the students to raise their hand when there was something they noticed that most of the movie posters had in common.  I gave them a round or two of watching the slideshow before I started to call on students.  I got great answers which I placed into two lists.  List one had things they would have to have on their poster and the other optional choices -- I did not label these lists just yet.  Students reported great observations - title, characters, background, dates, actor names, presented by, etc.

Once we had our lists I told the students that they have been working on something in another class that had a title, characters, a setting, and a date it would be presented to an audience -- sure enough the excitement in the room started to grow.  I then explained that they would be creating "movie posters" for their Fractured Fairy Tales.

For the first class each student was responsible for making a rough draft of a poster for their group - they could discuss titles and such next class.  So, each student created a version of their Fairy Tale on paper.

Next class I had the students get together in their Fairy Tale groups and discuss each other's rough drafts.  I gave examples of things I should hear, "I like the way you drew your letters, but I like this other title" or "I like where you placed the characters" or "I like your wolf and I like your pig" - After about 5 minutes of them discussing their work I handed out another piece of paper to be their 2nd rough draft.  I asked students to either re-draw or cut out pieces they liked from their papers and arrange them on their next draft.

The 3rd class I handed out their Final Draft paper - poster size.  The students then had to re-create their 2nd rough draft onto their final paper.

The classes worked really well together and I only had to help a couple of groups work through some issues -- mostly based on how they were talking to each other.  After helping them through their issues they were off and running!

A few classes later when I was talking with the Drama teacher about the project she mentioned that she wanted them to do backgrounds that we could project behind them while they were presenting.  I offered to have them do it in art!  The technical theatre person in me was so excited!

The following class I had the groups split up their teams - some students worked on their poster while the remaining people in the group worked on different backgrounds for their story.  Most groups are ending up with 2-5 background scenes!

The students are drawing their backgrounds with pencil, coloring with oil pastel and watercoloring overtop.  The depth of color in these are beautiful!  When they are complete I will be making a slide show of their backgrounds by taking pictures and entering them into the computer.  During their show we will sit with the script and as they change scenes I will be able to go to the next slide!



I am super excited for these shows and will post an update on how everything turns out!