6 Ways To Use the Star Wars App in Class!


I loved the new Star Wars film, I thought it was brilliant! In the build up to the movie, I had been using Star Wars as a stimulus as I knew a lot of the children were also excited about it. I did a big project based on the BB-8 Sphero in class.

You can read about what we did with BB-8 here. 



With another class, we explored an 360 degree video based on one of the Star Wars planets and wrote a story based on this -


The boy who created this example was amazed to see the Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker himself liked the video!

I also had to get involved with @iPadEducators and his Star Wars Project that you can read here.

Today, @WatsEd shared the following tweet - 

The web link is fantastic and gives an amazing immersive panoramic image of two scenes from the film that children can explore and use as a writing stimulus in class!

From exploring the site it led me to download the Star Wars Force Awakens app! It is FREE and feels like it has been designed exactly for me with a range of activities that I love including - emojis, augmented reality and virtual reality. So here are a few ideas for how to use this app in class -


1 - Create a Growth Mindset Display Using the Force!

I am a big fan of promoting Growth Mindset in school and many schools have some fantastic display boards to promote this is school. Why not use the app to create your own by using the Selfie option. Let children turn themselves into Jedi Knights as shown in this example -


Next to each picture of the children could be their targets for the upcoming term alongside some of these fantastic posters from teacherpaulp's blog click the example to see them all - 


You may also find this link useful, full of different Star Wars quotes to inspire!

2 - Use the emojis to retell or create a story!

I love using emojis in class, you can read this old blogpost about different ways of using the emoji tool in class. Within the app, there is a whole range of Star Wars emojis that can be used for similar activities like story maps - 


3 - Bring a Stormtrooper into the Classroom!

The AR element to the app allows the teacher to bring three characters into your classroom - stormtrooper, BB-8 or flametrooper. Within the app, you can video or capture images as the character performs different actions.

I love using Augmented Reality in the classroom and you can read other ways in which I have used it here. It can be a brilliant stimulus in the classroom for writing. Maybe you could explain that some important droid, message or object is hidden in the school and the First Order are desperate to find it and therefore, storm troopers have searched the school. As Jedi Knights, the children must find this message and return it to the resistance! And there is the perfect stimulus to write a purposeful story. 
4- Explore the Star Wars Universe using Virtual Reality

I am a massive fan of virtual reality and I have previously blogged about using it in the classroom here. Within the app, you can follow a mission on Planet Jakku using Virtual Reality by either using a VR Headset like Google Cardboard or view it 2D on your iPad.

I love the way you can fully immerse yourself into the world and decide where to look. As a stimulus for writing it is fantastic as you have a multisensory approach with sounds along with visuals. The app will also take pictures every time you tap the screen making it easy to collect screenshots as the children can then use these pictures to create a storyboard. 
Following the same idea from this blog post - Creating Effective Storyboards using the iPad children can combine screenshots from the Star Wars app with Pic Collage and Book Creator to create a storyboard linked to the VR Mission in the app - 



5 - Orally tell the story adding sound effects!

Using the Emoji story map, Augmented Reality story or the Virtual Reality mission allow the children to write a story. As a way to further bring that story to life, ask the children to perform their writing and recording this on the iPad using an app like Audioboom. On a different iPad load the sound effects board and play the different sound effects at appropriate points in the story to really bring the story to life!
6 - How to be a Jedi instructions

The app also has a game that allows you to train as a Jedi by trying to follow the remote. Once the children have played the game and using their knowledge of the films ask them to create a set of instructions for How to Be a Jedi!
ALSO - Don't forget to check out this blog post looking at the Star Wars Crawl as a stimulus for reading. 


 I hope you find these ideas useful and if you use them in class, please tweet/email or share examples on my facebook page!

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