They used live action actors with green screen and selected Mandarin as the language they’d feature. This movie, “Media in the Mall”, was created by the students in Ms. They used puppets and selected Urdu as the language they’d feature. This movie, “A Beary Good Lesson About Media”, was created by the students in Mrs. They used Fisher Price toys and selected Mandarin as the language they’d feature. This movie, “Teaching Media (In Chinese)” was created by the students in Mrs. They used Lego and selected French as the language they’d feature. This movie, “The Super Media Movie”, was created by the students in Mrs. They used claymation and selected Tamil and Spanish as the languages they’d feature. This movie, “Media in the Library”, was created by the students in Ms.Chiu’s Grade 1 class. It took three months of work, but I’m proud to announce that we made our self-imposed deadline and we have six new films to share with the world. Some groups needed a lot of coaching and support to complete their tasks.
![lego movie maker lego movie maker](https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/catalog/assets/blt57621e37d338c8a7/1/tlm2_1hy19_mm_masterclass_introduction1_thumbnail_com.jpg)
There were times when I worried about what the other teams would do while a certain group was active – because these are six- to nine-year-olds, it was challenging to provide other media-related tasks for them to complete independently while I helped the group that was involved with a certain stage of the project. We learned about the various jobs involved in movie production and most of our decision making for the project was collaborative, except for the times when the executive producer (that’s me) decided to exert her influence because of time constraints or project management issues. This project took a LONG time to complete. The classes decided to make new videos from scratch and create them in multiple languages. They mentioned students without the Internet at home, students with disabilities, and students who speak different languages.
![lego movie maker lego movie maker](http://thebrickblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/LEGO-Movie-Maker-5.jpg)
We asked ourselves a powerful set of questions: Whose voices are not heard? We made those videos to help other students learn about media – who would have difficulty accessing that message? I was amazed by the insightful responses. My six primary division classes watched the videos that their schoolmates created four years prior, which was a neat experience because those 2012 students are now in the junior-intermediate grades and the younger students could see what their older schoolmates were able to produce when those “big kids” were their age. This year, I’ve tried to improve my focus on incorporating equity.
![lego movie maker lego movie maker](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zcAPDTcOkBk/maxresdefault.jpg)
It was an ambitious project but was popular and quite successful. Way back in 2012, my four primary division classes that I saw for media literacy instruction created movies that we published to YouTube about the definition of media. Sometimes, however, it’s worth returning to a task if you can improve on it. I think it’s healthy to try new assignments and not be content to go with just “tried and true”. I try not to repeat “old” projects that I’ve already worked on with students in previous years.