Brodie's Book Trailer- Year 8 Corrie.

Our Year 8 Students have been working on ‘Horror’ as a genre this term. Some of the short stories they have produced have been truly amazing. As you can imagine, Horror is a topic that results in high engagement amongst young adults and the students have embraced this subject with great enthusiasm.

This past Thursday, I was fortunate enough to spend the day participating in an exciting and innovative lesson plan with Year 8 Corrie. Together, Corrie and I walked the students through Book Trailers. Some of the questions we asked the students to consider were, what makes an effective book trailer? Is it the music? Is it the voiceover? The images? The text? The special effects? Is it a combination of all of these things?

We showed the students several book trailers. Most of them great, some, not so well done. (All of these can be found on my YouTube Channel-linked to the previous page, Book Trailers- A Valuable Tool For Engagement.) Most importantly, we discussed the ability to produce a high quality and engaging book trailer with a zero monetary budget

We asked them to consider the following- how would they make their book trailer? Would they use iMovie, Frame by Frame, Keynote, etc? What music and images would they use? Since copyright is an important consideration, they would need to create their own music using GarageBand. Would they use sound effects? Special effects? Would they be filming themselves? If so, how would they do this? Would they use their laptops or Flip Cameras?

Maddison's Book Trailer- Year 8 Corrie

We then walked them through storyboarding and the importance of carefully planning their book trailer. (Corrie had found a great template for storyboarding in Pages. He is quite gifted in all things technical and you can find his blog HERE)

If the purpose of a book trailer is to ‘sell’ a book to a reader, what did they need to include to ensure they ‘sold’ their short horror story to a wider audience? We asked them to consider the importance of the text they chose to use, if any, in their book trailer.

The result? Spectacular! I cannot convey how impressed we are with the end result. Our students have produced some outstanding work. And most importantly, they had a wonderful time. They were engaged, excited and enthusiastic. I have uploaded some book trailers here to share with you all, and will upload more as they are completed.

This is a simple and effective Literacy extension that anyone can achieve with their students, and well worth the effort.

I will start a new page for the Student Book Trailers to be uploaded, with a link to the YouTube Channel I am hosting them on.

Enjoy!