Teens partner with fourth-graders for poetry slideshow
June 4, 2008
By Laura Geggel
When Jettoa Suyama isn’t coming from “the white snow of Snoqualmie,” he sees himself from “the blazing sun of Hawaii.”
A fourth-grader at Snoqualmie Elementary School, Suyama put those images and others into a poem that was part of an assignmentgiven to students in both Devajani Scott’s fourth-grade class and the Digital Imaging Class at Mount Si High School, taught by Joe Dockery.
The two classes are working together to create digital slideshows. Students record their poems to run for the slideshow’s entirety.
Dockery learned about the project last summer through the Adobe Youth Voices project, an international program that educates non-profits about using multi-media to help create their voice.
Dockery helped create Adobe Premiere Elements 4 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 tutorials to accompany a poem titled, “Where I’m From,” by George Ella Lyon.
“I thought it would be cool to do with the elementary schoolers,” Dockery said. “(The poem is) very literal.
Instead of just reporting facts, it’s more using your senses to describe things.”
Dockery’s animation class paired with Scott’s students earlier in the year to create science presentations. The fourth-graders taught a portion of their science curricula to the high school students, who in return animated the concepts using Adobe Flash CS3. Both teachers hope to continue the partnership next year.
Both high school and fourth-grade students wrote their personal versions of the “Where I’m From” poem. The high-school students taught the fourth-graders how to use digital cameras and instructed them to take pictures of the images in their poems.
“Let them bring their poem to you. Have them read it,” said Dockery at a digital imaging lesson May 28. “Their pictures are on our servers.”
Sarah Moran’s fourth-grade partner, Suyama, decided to amend his poem so it would fit more closely with the photos in his slideshow. Sophomore Tricia Prewitt helped fourth-grader Melissa Hruska rearrange the order of her photos in the slideshow.
Junior Mathew Lynne summed up the day’s activities.
“We worked on putting the photos together in Photoshop and rotated them. We put in some creative stuff – added some text, added some photos to them,” Lynne said. “We then put them into (Adobe) Premier Elements and added music to them.”
Many elementary students were literal in describing the places they were from, while high school students placed more emphasis on their emotions and senses.
“I really liked this project,” said Prewitt. “It’s fun for the little kids, but it’s also fun for me. I got to find all of these old pictures from when I was six. I think it’s cool the fourth-graders get to use computers and learn how to use them. Society is all about the technology right now.”
Prewitt said she also made friends with her fourth-grade partners, who went from speaking in monosyllabic responses to full sentences by the time the bell marked the end of the period.
Students will match recordings of the poems to the slideshows this week and receive a DVD of all of the “Where I’m From,” slideshows.
Reporter Laura Geggel can be reached at 392-6434 x221 or lgeggel@snovalleystar.com.
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