Watching Movies in Your Classroom
It can, in fact, be a valuable learning experience for everyone
Welcome to From the Teacher’s Desk, where we take turns further reflecting on our episodes and applications to the classroom.
On our podcast we regularly argue for the uses that film can have in our classroom. We demonstrate ways that teachers can instruct using whole films that lend themselves to deep and meaningful learning.
As we enter a season when teachers are tempted to use film to get to the end of a semester, here are a few ways you can utilize movies to extend your classroom learning.
Create an end-of-unit comparison guide
English teachers are famous for saying that they liked the book better, but having students watch a film version of a book they have just studied might be a good time for them to critically evaluate the choices the filmmaker made in their portrayal of the work they have read.
Invite students to compare characters and identify places where the portrayals of the characters didn’t match the way they imagined them while they were reading.
Challenge students to find deviations from the original text and explain if they agree with the filmmaker’s decision.
Use the viewing as an opportunity to discuss how stories naturally change with the mediums being used. One example is this movie comparison guide that I created for Animal Farm.
Use movies to extend ideas
One of my favorite units to teach is the memoir Night as part of a larger Holocaust/modern-day genocide unit. How I have taught it has evolved with the students in my care, but I’m a strong believer in helping students see that their study of the Holocaust isn’t about one horrific event from the 20th century; it’s about our past, present, and future as humans and global citizens.
As a result, I have shown students everything from Hotel Rwanda to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I point out to my students that the films we watch in class aren’t intended to be fillers. Instead, I want them to see that learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum; everything we study relates in some way to other topics and ideas.
One of my classic assignments is a comparison of Dead Poets Society (our episode over the film can be found here) and A Separate Peace, but it could easily be adapted to different but thematically similar pieces.
Utilize study guides that encourage reflection over recall
We want our students to be present. We want to believe that they are learning something. We want an easy way to check to see if they were paying attention, instead of sleeping or playing on their cell phones.
I remember taking the time to create detailed study guides early in my career, coming up with a list of short answer questions that required my students to pay close attention to the film so that they wouldn’t miss it. But they inevitably missed the detail, asked friends for help, and then got into trouble for talking. Or they would be absent for one day of viewing. And then they would either have to come in later to make up the day they missed, or I would have to excuse them from the activity before they found the answers from a friend with a completed study guide.
I started giving my students more holistic study guides several years ago when I started teaching AP. I wanted them to practice critical thinking and rhetorical analysis. So I designed their assignments to focus on the details that mattered to them and the meaning that they gleaned from the text, not the specific details I wanted them to notice or memorize.
This end-of-unit close reading guide can be adapted for nearly any film. I have also used this rhetorical analysis guide for documentaries that I show to introduce new topics.
Movie watching doesn’t have to be a meaningless time filler.
It can instead be a rich enhancement of the learning that is already taking place in the classroom.
How are you ensure learning while watching films with your students?
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