How to Watch Any Movie in Class and Get Away with It
Maybe the title of this post should be, “How to Watch Any Age-appropriate Movie and Get Away with It,” but you get the idea. Sometimes at the end of the school year (or maybe even before), my brain is just too frazzled to plan an elaborate lesson. I usually love creative, rigorous activities, but especially during that last week of school, I just want to turn on a movie and crash.
Still, my teacher conscious won’t let me play a movie without some sort of educational benefit, so this is how I get away with making any movie educational:
I tell each student to pull out a piece of paper and a writing utensil (acting, of course, as if any of my students even still have their writing utensils).
I tell my students the title of the movie. So far, I’ve done this with The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him; Now You Don’t, and The Strongest Man in the World, but any movie can work, as long as the majority of your students haven’t seen it before.
I ask my students to make predictions about the movie’s genre, setting, conflict, and resolution. They write their predictions on their papers.
I start the movie. As we watch, my students put check marks next to any predictions they got right. For any predictions that missed the mark, they write the correct answer below the prediction. It keeps them surprisingly engaged!
Again, I know this isn’t the most rigorous educational activity on the face of the planet, but it reviews ELA concepts and fills up time. Some days, that’s enough!
