Term 4 Week 4

Boost 2

There are only a couple of Boost sessions left for the year so we haven't started any ongoing projects.  We have returned to working on social skills and group work.

Today we learned about what empathy is.  We talked about how empathy is really thinking about how someone else is feeling.  First we started thinking about what it would be like to be Mum, what would Mum be thinking about and feeling.  It took a while, but the boys really started thinking about what Mum's take on life is.  They talked about what it would feel like as Mum, driving them around to sports, thinking about work, finishing work at home, feeling frustrated when the kids aren't listening!

Then we thought about when we have done something silly that we regret.  Without naming what we have all done (and everyone has something to feel regret about) we thought about what it was like for the other person.  We tried to empathise with how that person would have felt or thought.

Empathy is really important, as it guides our behaviour towards others.  It helps when we think of the bigger picture and how we affect how others are feeling.

We put this to the test with a game of speed chess on the giant chess board.  Teams of four played chess with only ten seconds to make each move.  The challenge was to think about the other team members and how your move may affect the others, and we also worked on genuinely thanking the opposition for the game.  

Term 3 Week 7

Boost 1
We had a break from movie making today, and had some creative thinking games.  These games concentrated on thinking of lots of different things in a time limit.  The children thought it would be easy, but it's not easy when you are under pressure!  We also had a technology challenge, where the children had ice block sticks and string to hold a marble out from a table as far as they could.  

Term 2 Week 8

Boost 1.
In the last couple of weeks Boost 1 have been holding interviews with some people who have been involved with Sacred Heart school now and in the past. It is the 50th jubilee of Sacred Heart school this year. Today we are editing our interviews with imovie. By editing our interviews were cutting bits of it out.
By Jacob

Term 2 Week 3 - Boost 1

This week we finished our first movies.  We added transistions to our video clips last week, and also added titles and subtitles.  This week we added sound to our movies.  We added voiceover and sound effects.  

These videos are the first videos that the children have made at Boost, and the children learned a lot about editing, and adding sound, that they would do differently next time.

Term 2 Week 2

Boost 2.
Today we reaquainted ourselves and the boys talked about what they wanted to learn more about this year.  The overwhelming majority wanted more creative thinking and inventing, so there will be a lot more technology challenges and creating things this year.

To reignite our creative thoughts, we looked at some Rebus puzzles.  A rebus is a word puzzle put in a cryptic way to represent a word, phrase, or saying.  The boys did these today, can you figure them out?

Boost 1 - Term 2 Week 1

Welcome back to Boost for 2012.

Today the children were reintroduced to each other and the new children learned about what Boost is all about.

This term we are working on videoed interviews about Sacred Heart School, for the Jubilee, and the first things that we learned were the 5 big mistakes of Amateur video.

Firehosing – moving the camera around too fast, instead of panning nice and slowly.
Jogging – Carrying the camera while walking, and having jumping pictures as a result.
Lighting – if you subject is in front of the light/sun, then you won't be able to see the front of the subject, it will be in shadow.
Noseroom – leaving space in front of the subject's face, so it looks like they have room to move. 
Headroom – Filling the viewing frame with the subject.  Don't have the person's head right down the bottom of the screen with dead space above.

This is the video that we watched, explaining these mistakes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etVxvl6mcJ8&list=PL7A7E273FAC181113&index=3&feature=plpp_video

The children then worked in pairs/threes to use a video camera to show these mistakes and how to fix them.  Next week they will be putting this footage into a small film to explain their work.