Oakland Beach’s Academy awards motivates students

Kelcy Dolan
Posted 5/28/15

Oakland Beach’s 6th grade is one star-studded class.

On Wednesday morning movie stars, talk show hosts, musicians and athletes walked the red carpet for the 5th Annual Academy Awards, anxiously …

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Oakland Beach’s Academy awards motivates students

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Oakland Beach’s 6th grade is one star-studded class.

On Wednesday morning movie stars, talk show hosts, musicians and athletes walked the red carpet for the 5th Annual Academy Awards, anxiously waiting to see which 6th grade director would win the Oscar.

The students strutted their stuff, dressed up for the occasion, and even the teachers joined in wearing full-length gowns and tuxedos.

There were two categories this year, one a book trailer on a novel of the students’ choosing and a brief “documentary” on a disease.

Both Mary Chisholm and Meg Shideler’s classes used Animotos, a web-based digital video-maker, to make the “films” on which the students were judged. Students worked hard not only in the classroom but also during their library time with librarian Suzanne Skiffington. Skiffington said students couldn’t wait to get on the computers every time they came to library. It was a project this year’s 6th graders not only looked forward to all year, but for the past few years as they watched previous classes present.

“All the grades look forward to this project. They can’t wait to be in 6th grade. For these students there was a lot of build-up. They began seeing this in 1st or 2nd grade,” Skiffington said.

For the fifth year students produced a few other videos for the ceremony. The first was an inter-disciplinary stop motion animation video about the effects of bullying.

All the students read Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson and wrote two poems as a class before putting it to music. The second showed all the kids doing good deeds around the school, from helping each other with homework to cleaning up the grounds.

All three teachers stressed just how important it is for students to be “fluent” in the use of technology.

Shideler said, “Everything is based in technology now, from standardized tests to graduating high school with a portfolio. They need to know how to use this.”

“We are giving our students the basis, the beginnings to understanding technology,” Chisholm said.

The runners-up for the book trailer Animoto were Lars Mangold, Chantel van Heyningen, Phakeo Arounerangsy and Jairon Soto. Daniel Bergeron was the overall winner for the category for his trailer on Rump: The True Story of Rumplestilskin.

In the documentary portion Maya Dowaliby, Eric Fang, Ashley Hogan and Caley Jordan with Darius Frey winning the overall category for his video on Alzheimer’s disease.

Along with a plastic Oscar statue, all of the winning students also received a citation from Senator William Walaska for a job well done. Walaska commented on the creativity of the project and then told the sixth grade they were “all stars” in his eyes.

Winner Darius Frey said he had been excited for 6th grade because of this project.

“I’m so excited. I can’t believe I won. It was a lot of hard work and there was a lot of research, but it was a lot fun,” he said.

That’s exactly what Chisholm and Shideler wanted to do. They said they didn’t want to assign a book report or paper but a project that would engage the students’ interests. The ceremony, on the other hand, is “to celebrate those students who do exceptional work and reward and promote hard work,” Shideler said.

Skiffington said, “This project takes a long time, but it’s something the kids want to do. It keeps them motivated to learn.”

All of the videos from the Academy Awards can be viewed on the Oakland Beach Library homepage.

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