Throughout the month of February, Northside students have directed a series of iMovie trailers for the Northside Morning Show called “Heroes Sharing Heroes.” The segment is in honor of Black History Month.

With support from special education teacher Kim Constantine, students in Darlene Sambuchi’s fourth-grade class and Kasey Patterson’s fifth-grade class have been creating iMovies that include text, photos and sound to represent the person they chose. Some of the notable African Americans selected were Muhammad Ali, George Washington Carver, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes.

While many of the students have created presentations before, it was the first time many of them had used iMovie in the classroom. Students researched their person by reading books and searching online resources. They took notes and evaluated those notes for interest, importance and relevancy before they wrote a graphic organizer and script. Students then searched for pictures and audio, began working in iMovie and recorded their scripts.

Students typically worked in partners but some chose to work solo, like LeYou Yu.

“I prefer to work alone to have more control over the project, “said Yu. “If your partner is sick, you have to wait on your partner to do their part.”

Yu, who chose Duke Ellington for his project, added, “I’ve done lots of presentations with PowerPoint but this was the first time I used iMovie. You can assemble pictures and recordings pretty easily. It can be a little challenging getting those to match up to the script. I kept timing myself to get it right.”

Marisa Test and Ellie Black paired up to produce their movie trailer about Benjamin Banneker.

“I liked being able to work with Marisa because we have different mindsets,” said Black. “If she’s thinking one thing and I’m thinking another, we try to meet in the middle.”

Black added, “It was so much fun to experiment with the different features in iMovie. We definitely had a lot of fun during the process. It was a great opportunity to share what we learned in a fun way!”

Watch the Morning Show on Northside’s YouTube channel here.

View more photos on Facebook here.