Published on: 8 August 2014


Spaghettification, onomatopoeia and vainglorious were among words Preparatory School boys brought to life as part of the Video Vocabulary competition held during Terms 1 and 2. The challenge was open to boys, from Pre-Primary to Year 6, to create 15-second videos with some highly imaginative results.

Head of the Preparatory School Richard Wright, who based the challenge on a similar competition run by The New York Times, said boys from each year group embraced the challenge with more than 50 entries in total. Mr Wright said it was a fun way of enhancing the School’s focus on improving boys’ vocabulary development in the academic program.

Mr Wright said it was up to the boy, group or class how creative they wanted to be as long as they pronounced and defined the word. “They could act, use animation, draw, sing, dance, use photographs, or anything else to help viewers understand and learn their word,” he said.

At assembly each week, Mr Wright would show up to four videos to the Prep School. “It really gathered momentum and several were really outstanding and creative,” he said.

Entries included a Lego stop-animation video, which took two days to create; some Mandarin words; and a great entry by PMC student Clancy Waterman (Year 4). Mr Wright said the boys were highly motivated yet there was no mention of prizes. However, as the quality was so good, Mr Wright felt compelled to awarded two prizes at the end of the competition.

Watch three of the videos here:

 

Vainglorious by Aran Wheatley (Year 6) and Sebastian Clark (Year 6)

Utopia by James Marshall (Year 5)

Alliteration by Class 2HJ