Earlier this year a colleague and I attended a couple of ELA conferences. Both conferences spent a large amount of time talking about book trailers and how fabulous they are. We were sold by the time we left and thought we would try it as a lesson for our tutoring groups. Basically, book trailers are a lot like movie trailers: trying to get audiences interested in checking it out by giving enough of a hook without giving away the ending. It teaches almost every objective for our junior high students, but can also benefit elementary and high school students. By the time our project was complete we covered: plot structure, foreshadowing, inferencing, tone, mood, main idea, summarizing, planning, drafting, editing, point of view, and persuasive writing.
We introduced the project by first showing them some book trailers we found online:
http://philbildner.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byvAz25jFX8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5l3Tikc3O0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYp3YWoCM1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQjcdiOvEyQ
Students used Photo Story to create their trailer and had no trouble navigating the fool-proof program that lets you upload and edit images, add music, voice, and text, and decide the transition between slides. Here are a couple of my favorites:
The kids had so much fun and really took pride in their work! The entire project took about 2 weeks (3 days a week for 55 minutes).
Below are the materials we gave students to get started. (Hopefully they download/print for you. I have never used this program before! If not, email me and I will send you the documents.)
Book Trailer Rubric
Plot Structure
~Mrs. Scott
