BRE students chronicle ocean adventures on film

RIVER CLUB — Students in Kelly Gavin’s gifted class at Braden River Elementary School turned their individual adventures in ocean learning into one adventure shared on the big screen Feb. 7, as they premiered their film, “The Tide Pool Condos.”

In the production, Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, tries to convince a real-estate agent not to develop condos in the ocean’s tide pools, which teem with oceanic life.

Under Gavin’s direction, students performed, filmed and edited their 26-minute play using the iMovie application. Students also created their own costumes for the play.

“Because we’ve been studying half the school year on the sea, this show is a way of reflecting (what we’ve learned) and it gives us a bit of fun, too,” said 10-year-old Andrew den Boggende, who particularly enjoyed creating and performing a “fish” dance for the film.

Gavin said she had three goals for the students’ oceanic studies: to find out as much as they could about ocean life; to learn to incorporate technology into learning; and to showcase what students had learned.
Students began studying the ocean in August and started working on the film in late November, she said.