Literature Cicle and book trailers!

This month I worked with another amazing high school english teacher, Jen Panarelli on an assignment that served as a warm-up to the summative assessment for a literature circle unit. Students chose from the following books for their literature circle: 
Within their book commercial, each student had to identify a major theme from the book and provide a brief character and plot introduction.  We used the educational version of Animoto and created students accounts so they would have the abilty to create longer vidoes.  The process to setup the accounts was slightly cumbersome but the results were very impressive. 

Here are a few examples: The Lord of the Flies, The Fault in Our Stars, Fahrenheit 451, and Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie. 

The Fault in Our Stars - http://animoto.com/play/aaDBK1UAnyf1eroLWzePsg

http://animoto.com/play/lAUhD70gnkx0XCarPXPLkw

http://animoto.com/play/BMvgsxx2q7587owowqV1TQ

http://animoto.com/play/fkAh14n60hc3JLEpEo60aQ

http://animoto.com/play/YB4FFZRaIRp1q89f21KkGA

http://animoto.com/play/Oh2MSqdat0NbGMExMrWiLA

http://animoto.com/play/9JStdO1xiw5nG3VShVQPUw

http://animoto.com/play/NotbBCOHOevd6R81SMmXvg

Today for the their final exam essay, the students used chromebooks in class to analyzed the theme they identified in greater detail.