This past week we were invited down by Puppetry in Practice (PIP) of Brooklyn College to run a hands-on workshop to help the staff integrate stop-motion animation into lessons for English Language Learners (ELLs).  It was a fabulous full-day gathering of folks from both LogicWing and PIP.  After running through our standard workshop activities around the “how and why” stop-motion is a powerful learning tool, forcing kids to slow down and think about processes and content, we put on our brainstorming caps to discuss the challenge at hand!  How can we use story through stop-motion animation to teach the English language?  The expressions and simple gestures of characters, the background colors, the detailed props … all elements build together to illustrate a story that we can share, write about, and talk about!  

One of the activities that PIP was facilitating at a school in the Bronx was around the story of the Chinese Zodiac, and so to launch the activity we created an example in just 30 minutes.  Even without words or letters, we can still watch the video and get a sense of the story (although the emperor does look a bit “modern”).  We are looking forward to continuing to work more with PIP as they explore the elements of stop-motion animation in the bilungual classes they will be working with in the Bronx.  Stay tuned!