CI5472 Teaching Film, Television, and Media
Module 12: Integrating Film into the Curriculum ~ Designing Units
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Initial interest rousers. In designing units, you need to begin with an interest rouser activity that hooks students into the topic, issue, theme, genre, etc. By initially engaging them with texts, material, or phenomena you will be studying, you are providing them with an experience that may enhance their interest and lead them to perceive the value or worth of the unit. For example, in doing a poetry unit, rather than beginning with a discussion of “what is poetry,” students may begin by bringing in and sharing favorite poems. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Connecting to students’ cultural backgrounds. In planning a unit, you also need to consider your students’ cultural background experiences and perspectives. In doing so, you are providing students will what Carol Lee (2001) describes as “cultural modeling” of connections between the students’ cultural background and what they are learning. In working with African American students, Lee builds on their background knowledge of the use of symbolic language in hip-hop culture to help them interpret symbolic language in literary texts. This suggests that you not only need to be aware of your students’ cultural background, but you also need to devise methods of making links between that background and the material in a unit. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Applying critical approaches. You may also want to have students learn to apply the difference critical approaches discussed in Module 4: discourse analysis; semiotic; archetypal; rhetorical; gender, class, race analysis; poststructuralist/postcolonial approaches. In applying these approaches, it is important that you model their application with specific texts, as well as provide students with ample opportunity to practice applying them to texts. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Providing variety. In planning your unit, you also want to include a variety of different types of experiences in order to avoid redundancy and repetition. You can create variety by incorporating a range of different modes discussed in the next chapter: drama, videos/DVDs, different forms of discussion, art work, creative writing, etc. You may also build in choices between these different modes; again, students are more likely to be motivated to participate when they are given options. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sequencing activities. It is important to sequence activities so that each builds on the next in some logical manner. In deciding on how to sequence events, you’re thinking about the need for “first things first” — what do students need to do to prepare them for an event. For example, you could start a classroom with a large-group discussion of a story. However, you may find that many students do not contribute to the discussion or have little to say about the poem. Adopting an alternative “first-things-first” approach, you back up and consider those events that would better prepare students for a large-group discussion. That might include an initial freewrite about their responses to the story followed by sharing their freewrites with each other in small groups. Through this writing and discussion, students are articulating and extending their responses. Then, when they are in the large-group discussion, they can draw on their writing or discussion, resulting in the greater likelihood that they may contribute to the discussion. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Integrating writing. In your activities, it if important to integrate writing different types of informal writing activities — freewriting, listing, jotting, journal-entries, mapping, etc., to help students formulate their responses to media texts and ideas in a spontaneous, informal manner. Jim Burke’s “school tools” includes various informal writing tools for fostering student thinking about texts. And, having students share their writing on-line, as noted in Module 1, gives them a sense of audience and purpose for formulating their ideas. This informal writing can then serve as the basis for creating more formal final essay reports at the end of a unit as well as material for inclusion in a portfolio (see discussion of portfolios below). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Producing texts. As was discussed in Module 3, it is also important that students be continually their own video, multi-media, or hypermedia texts as a means of helping them understand media texts. Students are also more likely to be engaged in a unit when they can display their creative productions to others. For example, in a unit on the influence of the media on sports, students could create their own multi-media production that includes clips of television and radio broadcasts, sports talk shows, sports promotions, and news coverage of sports, clips that serve to portray underlying connections between these media related to economic and cultural forces shaping sports. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In selecting media texts that are copyrighted, you and your students need to follow the guidelines associated with “fair use” of media texts for educational, non-commercial, classroom use: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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