Elementary Book Trailers

Just as we are finishing the 2012 year, fourth grade students have been busy finishing their book trailers using Animoto.  Students choose a book they had already read that was available in our school libraries.  They then planned out what they were going to say about the book to get students interested in reading but not give away the whole story.  (Many kids wanted to give a summary of the book, which included the ending so lots of re-writing was done after the first try.)  I gave students a planning sheet that looked like this: 

After students were done planning, we used our subscription to Britannica ImageQuest to find images that would illustrate our sentences. 

We used Animoto to create our book trailers.  Here are two but check out our full set of trailers on our school webpage. 




We also had a few students go further and create a book trailer for a series of graphic novels.  You can see those trailers on this page, also a school webpage. 

Students said they loved making these videos and the second time was a lot easier than the first (for those who had time to work on a second one).