The Teachers' Animation Toolkit

part of many subjects, including the Art and Design, English, 
PHSE, Citizenship, Photography and Media curricula. The 
processes involved in creating an animation project use skills and 
understandings such as: creative writing, team working, measuring, 
INTRODUCTION

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The Teachers’ Animation Toolkit
planning, organizing and developing awareness of the wider world. 
All of these skills and experiences can be readily assessed.
From the outset, we wanted the practice of animation to be explored 
alongside the teaching of media or cineliteracy. The toolkit aims to 
show teachers how the viewing of animated fi lms can be a valuable 
starting point for classroom discussions around cineliteracy and can 
also be used as a theoretical frame of reference for the projects that 
they produce.
Animation is the most dynamic form of expression available to 
creative people . . . Animation is used in science, architecture, 
healthcare and broadcast journalism . . . it is simply everywhere!
(Paul Wells, 
The Fundamentals of Animation
, Thames and 
Hudson 2006)
RESEARCH TECHNIQUES
Ten schools across Norfolk, UK took part in the research, which 
ran over a 3-year period between 2004 and 2007. It involved testing 
a wide variety of teaching approaches and animation genres then 
collecting evidence to evaluate their effi cacy and the learning that 
had taken place. Evidence took the form of student sketchbooks, 
interviews, photographs and examples of student-made animations. 
Video recordings of lessons were made and handheld cameras 
were used to pick up on relevant issues, raised in discussions 
between practitioner and pupils or practitioner and teacher.
Pupils were asked to explain, in open discussion, their thought 
processes, their decision making and their overall responses to 
the assignment via the camera and evaluation sheets. These 
discussions were used to explore how pupils articulated the visual 
and text-based language of music, sound production and moving 
images. Their responses were complemented by after-class 
interviews with the teachers. The evidence was then edited in order 
to highlight key points and recommendations and prioritize the best 
practice for inclusion in this toolkit.

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Introduction
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Teachers were provided with worksheets, showing how to animate 
without expensive technology and useful tips on what animations 
might be shown to the class. The worksheets promoting cineliteracy 
were carefully designed to fi t within the UK curriculum standards. 
Many offered active learning, extension work and differentiated 
activities to suit all learners and to fi t within 50/60 minutes of 
classroom time. Schemes of work focused on more advanced 
projects and took place over a series of lessons. All these materials 
were refi ned in response to teacher and student evaluation before 
being included in the toolkit.
Not only have you brought life into the department and 
demonstrated what amazing results can be achieved by our pupils, 
you have encouraged and inspired pupils who fi nd the academic 
subjects more challenging. I have noticed some real positive 
changes in a particular group of challenging boys, who have really 
taken to the workshops . . . (One of these) rarely shows enthusiasm 
and is one of these ‘too cool for school’ types. I thought he would 
struggle with collaborative work and probably moan through 
the whole thing but he remained quiet and took part with little 
distraction. It was after the workshop when he went out of his way to 
fi nd me to explain how much he loved the day and how he wanted to 
do more of this in the future.
(Dan Coombes, Head of Art, Flegg High School)