mrmayo.org

Last year, Mr. Stelzner, a colleague of mine, and I started our collaborative after-school stop-motion project, The Longfellow Ten. We thought it would be fun, and useful, to have students create absurd stop-motion films about important literary terms. We also thought it would be helpful to share our films online, so others could use the site as a resource in the classroom. 

We recruited a few other middle school teachers in other states to join our project. Kevin Hodgson, a teacher in Massachusetts, and his 6th grade students, head up the Northern Contingent of the Lf10. Ben Upton, a middle school teacher in Minnesota, jumped in with his students and started making stop-motion films about science concepts for the Midwest Collective of the LF10. Mr. Stelzner and I, and our students, make up the East Coast Syndicate. 

In a little over a year, we have collectively added 52 stop-motion films to our official LF10 website.  Students have created films that cover 43 different academic terms and concepts. We have over 170 comments on our various films, and over 4,000 page views to the site. We are hoping to continue to expand the project this year, and recruit new members.  If you are interested in getting your students involved, or have any questions, please let us know. It’s not necessary to have any experience with stop-motion. A year ago, we didn’t have any experience ourselves!