One of my most favorite activities to do with my students is to create book trailers. It allows them to give a summary of a book in a visual format that also gives them the opportunity to utilize their creativity.

There are several ways that students can create their book trailers. One is to use iMovie on an iPad to create their movie trailer. iMovie actually comes with several templates where students only need to create their text and snap in pictures to create a powerful movie/book trailer that will even include mood enhancing music. It is simple and easy to use. I even used the same thing to create a book trailer for a book that I wrote. You can see that below:

If you do not have access to iPads, and students are handy with the movie maker on Windows, they can use that to create their book trailer; however, that may require a more advanced skill set. I know that they do sometimes still have templates, just not those like iMovie.

The one that we use most often in the classroom is PowerPoint. PowerPoint, in case you did not know, has the capability to be saved as an mp4 which is a movie format. The only thing that students need to make sure of is that they use transitions, and not “on click” to go from slide to slide. In other words, they need to create the PowerPoint to basically play itself in Presentation mode. Please note that the online version in Office will not have the ability to create these types of PowerPoints. You have to use the desktop version. I’m not sure why they are not the same, but they are not created equal when it comes to creating these mp4 movies. I think that they do not add all of the bells and whistles to the online version. It’s the same with Word documents, as well. They just are not the same.

Once students have everything in their PowerPoint the way that they want it, play it through and make sure that the transitions are long enough, and once they are happy with it, they can use the File->Save As to save it as a mp4. Just change the PowerPoint to mp4. When I did this with my students, I always showed one or two students how to do it (make sure it is your tech savvy students) and then they always helped their classmates. This was a life saver, because it never failed how many times you had instructions on the board, gave them a print out of “How To”, and even included a step-by-step video, they still asked, “I don’t know how to do this.”

Once you’ve used this in the classroom, you’ll find multiple ways to use it yourself. I have created one with my students, even, before having them create one of their own, using one of their Short Stories we read during the school year (if at the end of the year). This was always a huge hit with my students. One year, we did this instead of a book report, and we even had an awards show like the Oscars, where we handed out trophies (purchased from Amazon) and did a viewing of all of the book trailers. It was a huge hit. The teachers on our hall selected the winners for each category and we opened envelopes just like the real awards ceremony. It was a lot of fun. You can be as creative as you want to be with these.

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