We visited the National Railway Museum, here in York, and spent the day learning lots about the stories of the railways and, in particular, about Stephenson's Rocket.  The fantastic museum staff explained how the rocket worked, and we learnt about the Rainhill Trials, the competition that the Rocket won.

We then worked in groups to design our own steam locomotives and to create a storyboard about what happened to each of our trains in our own fictional version of the Rainhill Trials.

Back in school, David came and worked with our class for a whole week.  We made our moving steam engines using paper, card, split pins and a lot of ingenuity!  We painted and drew the background scenery and created all the characters and props that we would need.  Then we started to animate!  Some of the GCSE imedia students from year 10 at Fulford school came along to join in the fun too!  On the last day a professional voice artist called Martine Dunn came to work with us to write and record the script.  We're very proud of the results - and we hope you enjoy it too.

Since the Anim8ed stories project we have started an animation after school club where the experts from years 3 and 4 are teaching other pupils how to animate - with a little bit of help from Mrs Pickering.  We have also worked with Mrs Ekers and Mrs Engleman's class to create an animation about the way that the centre of York has changed through the ages.  2 classes, about 60 pupils, History, Geography, Literacy, ICT and Animation - that's the way to have lots of fun and quite a lot of chaos!  We have nearly finished our masterpiece, and look forward to sharing it with you soon.