Video is everywhere in communication these days, including on Reels, TikTok, and Youtube, where our students are. Building creative video projects into ELA can help leverage students’ interests in these platforms toward building skills in research, storytelling, speaking, and building an argument. Not to mention skills within the genre itself, which are bound to come in handy in many fields. Keep reading to learn about Creative Video Project Ideas to use in the ELA classroom.
So today let’s dive into video in ELA. We’ll cover the best tech platform for straightforward editing, and explore six different project ideas. Hopefully by the end of today’s episode, you’ll be feeling excited instead of intimidated to get started with your first classroom video project.
Student Video Projects: The Easiest Tech
Let’s start with a quick look at the technology options out there. I’ve done plenty of video editing in iMovie, but last year I made the switch to do all my own video work in Canva, and it is much easier. So it’s a no-brainer for me to recommend it as a platform for your students, especially since I hope they’re already on Canva for other types of visual design work.
Canva makes it easy for students to…
- Upload their own video clips
- Upload and layer their own audio clips
- Create designed slides to mix and match with video clips
- Use Stock videos, audios, and photos available within the platform
- Add text overlay
- Edit visuals on the fly
Students would need at least three different programs to achieve the same results via iMovie, and visual editing is much clunkier, since any slides have to be imported as a finished product and can’t be edited from within the program.
Canva is simpler and more intuitive, and I couldn’t recommend it more for your ELA video projects. Plus, it’s free for educators and students.
Below you’ll see my walkthrough of the most essential Canva tools for student video creation. Can they go further? Absolutely! Will these techniques give them a strong start? Yes. If you’d like to become proficient with Canva yourself leading into your unit, this video is a great start, but you can also take my free Canva Confidence course to go deeper.
OK, I think we’re ready to dive into some project ideas. I’ve tried to order these loosely from easiest to most complex. As with audio projects, start simple, and as you and your students build your confidence, amp it up throughout the year. Once you’ve established a baseline of skills, you can also start providing a video option when you assign differentiated projects.
Try a Book Trailer Project
Book trailers are the low-hanging fruit of the ELA video project world. They’re a fabulous option for a choice reading check-in or a book club finale, as you can build in a clear authentic audience (other kids who might want to read the book or deserve a chance to be warned off if it’s terrible). You can have students record their review as a voiceover and play it over visual clips, let them do a talking head review, or invite a more visual trailer using Canva design and automation without their voice.
Here’s an example of a straightforward trailer built from a Canva template I designed to simplify the process for students just starting out with video. It’s an easy first video project.
If you want to use my version of this project, you can find it in The Lighthouse video projects section, or on TPT here.
Try a Grammar or Vocabulary Creative Video Project Ideas
Kids learn so much when they teach others. I always love the idea of giving students an outward-facing channel to share what they’ve learned with the world, whether it’s a podcast about vocabulary, an Instagram feed teaching writing lessons, or, in this case, a grammar or vocabulary video series.
Of course, outward-facing can come on many levels. Maybe your students will create short videos teaching vocabulary roots or grammar concepts that are just for your students (this year and in the years to come).
Or maybe they’ll also share them with the whole grade level at your school as a review tool within a hyperdoc.
Or maybe you’ll get all the permissions you need and start a vocabulary Youtube channel that your students run, or a grammar TikTok account for the school.
Whatever level of publicity you give the final output, teaching students to create short videos teaching a key concept that you want them to learn anyway is a win-win-win. Students will have to learn the content deeply to teach it, they’ll advance on their video editing skills, making them more comfortable in a vital modern medium, AND they’ll help each other learn potentially difficult concepts with a content delivery medium they’re likely to find interesting.
Add a Poetry Video Project to your Poetry Unit
If you teach a poetry unit, a poetry video is a relatively easy add. You can choose to have students showcase and interpret a poem they love, or write a poem of their own.
Once they’ve got a text, their goal will be to interpret it through the video medium. That means scripting and storyboarding the video, shooting or choosing video clips and other types of visuals, recording a voiceover and potentially choosing music, and mixing it all together. It’s more complex than a book trailer, because it involves interpretation. It’s easy to find models for visual poetry videos online, like Amanda Gorman’s Earthrise or Ada Limón’s “A Poem for Europa.“
Try “Moment Videos” with your Theater Unit
I love live performance projects for theater units, as you know if you’ve heard this episode about the project that made my favorite Shakespeare professor a legend. But maybe you don’t have time to do a full series of live scene performances. Video provides another way to get students out of their seats and acting, with the additional layer of improving their video skills.
Consider assigning “Moment Videos,” in which small groups isolate the most important ninety seconds of a scene and create a video around it, interpreting it however they wish. Sure, they could act it out in front of the camera. But they could also do a voiceover of a speech on top of a time lapse or a collage of related videos, an animation, or some other format that would stretch their skills within the video platform.
Try Stop Motion Animation Video with Personal Essays
If you’d like students to experiment with personal essays, and you’d like a hook to help them get excited about the idea, a stop motion video project with a personal essay voiceover could be just the thing. Check out the video, “Enryo,” (second video down on this page) to get an idea of what this might be like.
Students would need to storyboard their stop motion piece to complement the big ideas and pacing of their essays. Again, you could create a mini-version of this if you like, having students pull just one paragraph of their essay to animate, or you could get fully into it and spend several days in time lapse workshop in class.
Go All the Way with Creative Video Project Ideas
Looking for a major project to define a season in your class? We’ve now arrived at our final and most complex project (not to mention a VERY exciting one!). With a full documentary project, there’s so much you can do.
Students can analyze short documentaries as mentor texts and see how their craft moves create a compelling narrative.
Students can build and practice interview skills by building their documentary around a local expert related to their subject.
Students can learn about film elements like B Roll, Angle and Lighting, Voiceover, and Music.
Students can learn how to knit together separate parts into a cohesive whole that tells a story or makes an argument.
You can find my take on the video documentary project in The Lighthouse video project section, or on TPT here.
Exciting stuff, I know. Creative Video Project Ideas could be a great way for students to work on research skills, argument skills, or both, through a modern medium with plenty of appeal. With so many kids longing to be Youtubers or Tiktok sensations, the chance to sharpen their B-Roll, transition, and voiceover skills on a project for school is bound to resonate.
