Campbell Elementary School fourth-grade teacher Tom Yakowenko wanted to help his students learn about the American Revolution through staging a re-enactment, but the idea evolved into an hourlong movie.
Students wrote, acted in and made their own costumes, scenery and props for the movie, which included scenes depicting the Boston Tea Party, the First Continental Congress, Paul Revere’s ride, and the battles of Lexington and Concord. The flick was shown for other students at the school, and parents had an evening screening of the movie, complete with popcorn, Yakowenko said.
A shorter, edited preview was shown at the March 10 Board of Education meeting, attended by several students, parents and school officials. Many laughed when Paul Revere rode a toy horse (hobbyhorse-style, with a horse’s head on one end and a stick on the other) to warn colonists that the “British are coming, the British are coming.”
“The hard work of the students was evident,” said Metuchen Schools Superintendent Terri Sinatra after she saw the short version of the movie. “They will remember this forever.”
The movie grew out of discussions between Yakowenko and the class paraprofessional, Nancy Murtagh, and student teacher, Theresa Bonner. Both were instrumental, he said. Murtagh had “just as much to do with the making of this movie as I did.”
Yakowenko divided the 23 students in his homeroom into groups and assigned each group a movie scene to write. The groups then served as primary actors for their scene and helped out in other scenes as needed. They spent class time creating props. In all, it took about two weeks to create the movie.
“It definitely brought the history alive for them,” Yakowenko said. “They had to find out a lot in terms of research. Then they got to live the experience.”
Beth Lucas, mother of Yakowenko’s student Carly Lucas, said her daughter will always remember the events of the revolution after working on the movie. Carly was excited the entire time she worked on the movie.
“I was surprised at how much was in the movie,” Beth Lucas said. “I think they accomplished a lot. The children loved working on it, and to see the results, it was really amazing.”
Carly worked on the scene “The Shot Heard ’round the World.”
“I was a Red Coat,” said the 10-year-old fourth-grader. “I like that the whole school got to see it afterwards and we didn’t have to do schoolwork. Social studies was OK before, and I like it a little better now. It was fun making the props and the background.”
Carly said that years from now, she’ll recall the Boston Tea Party scene and the “shot heard round the world — that they don’t know who it came from.”
William Kacani, 9, another fourth-grader in Yakowenko’s class, worked on the Continental Congress scene. He also was in the battle scenes, because every student was needed for those scenes, he explained.
“I died twice,” Kacani said. “I’ll remember how much I learned and how much fun I had making [the movie]. Everything was educational, but fun to do.”
“It was good,” Yakowenko said. “The excitement and energy of the kids was fantastic. … We got finished with it, and they said, “Let’s make a movie about this.”