The project began with students being reintroduced to Encyclopedia Britannica. Students were given a research sheet and selected one of the 7 people they learn about during the Civil War to do their project about. Students started by gathering their facts and then reworded their information so it was in the correct voice and in 1st person.
instagram_civil_war_sheet.pdf |
Day 2:
The next time students focused on selecting a profile picture and a scene picture. The students would be putting themselves into the picture, so they selected their pictures with this in mind. Originally students were going to use Britannica Images but there were downloading issues so I ended up later downloading and adding the pictures to my webpage so students could select the pictures they wanted.
The second half of the class was sent exploring the Civil War trunk. I contacted the Civil War Trust and was able to borrow a Civil War trunk that contained uniforms, soldier gear, pictures, and other artifacts. The students were able to rotate from table to table to explore the different items. I loved the conversations we had about the different items.
Day 3
Now that students selected a picture they wanted for their scene we were ready to take their picture in front of the Green Screen. Since we still had the trunk for a few more days most of the classes were able to put on the clothing if they wanted a full body shot in their picture. While I called students into the broadcast room one at a time to take their pictures in front of the green screen the rest of the students worked on typing their research information into the Instagram template.
Day 4:
The project is now winding down and coming together. Students learned how to use Coral Shop Pro (my county doesn't have Photoshop Elements in the elementary school). We went over how to zoom in and out, erase a background, and how saving as a .png file allowed a transparent background. The students did a fantastic job editing their photos. It was so great to see how focused they were to remove any unwanted background (or body) from their photo.
Day 5:
After 5 weeks the 5th graders were finally finished with their project. They merged their original Civil War scene with the edited picture of themselves.They then saved an added their picture to their Instagram template along with the profile picture they selected.
The students were so proud and I was so pleased with how well they looked when completed. We will have about 175 of these completed when we are done and will load them on their teacher's webpages. Until then I have included a small sample of some of the finished ones below.