Studying the Wizard of Oz

Grade 4 students in the OPAL enrichment program created their versions of the Wizard of Oz story.

The students did the script writing, filming, editing, photo manipulations, etc. They were assisted by both teachers Cily Rueda and Maria Maynard as well as computer lab specialists Karen Feurer and Jen Russell. BOCES computer technician Joseph Masucci helped behind the scenes and transported the equipment to all of the schools.

All students had a role in the movies - some were spoken parts while others "appeared" as one of the characters with voiceovers.

The movies completed an OPAL unit called "forceful words," in which students read the novel Wizard of Oz and reflected on the forces present in weather, characters, beliefs, etc. in the book. This was their way of summarizing what they had learned. As they wrote the script they tried to connect some of the important things that they had discovered.

Below are the movies made by the students at the four elementary schools:

Glendaal Elementary OPAL movie

Glen-Worden Elementary OPAL movie

Lincoln Elementary OPAL movie

Sacandga Elementary OPAL movie

In order to view these movies, you need to have Quicktime, Windows Media Player or another program that can read .mov files.

These are very large files and they may take a while to load in a browser and may not play well in a browser. If you have problems, try downloading them to your desktop and then playing them from there.