Including movies in your lessons can help improve learning and increase student interest. It can provide direct instruction on the subject at hand. While there are pros and cons to including movies in lesson plans, there are ways to help ensure that the films you choose have the desired learning impact.
If you are unable to view an entire movie due to time constraints or school guidelines, you may want to select specific scenes or clips to share with your students. To increase understanding of particularly complex dialogue, use the subtitle feature when viewing the movie.
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There are a variety of effective ways to insert movies into your lessons that reinforce learning objectives.
1 – Create a generic spreadsheet for movies
If you plan to regularly show movies in class, consider creating a generic worksheet. It can be used in all films shown throughout the year. Include a list of questions relevant to all films.
- What is the basic plot?
- Who is (are) the protagonist(s)?
- Who is the antagonist?
- Write a short summary of the film.
- What are your impressions of the film?
- How does the film relate to what we are studying in the classroom?
- What are some filmmaking techniques the director uses to enhance the message? (Soundtrack, Lighting, Sound and Camera Point of View).
2 – Create a movie-specific worksheet
If there is a specific movie that fits well into your lesson plan, you might consider creating a specific worksheet for that movie. Watch the movie in advance to determine the sequence of events you want your students to observe as they watch.
Include general information such as the film's title and director, as well as specific questions that students should answer while watching the film. To ensure they are seeing the most important aspects of the film, pause to allow students to fill in their answers.
Be sure to include space on the worksheet for open-ended questions about major plot points in the film.
3 – Have your students take notes
It is important that students learn to take notes effectively. Before instructing your students to take notes during a movie, teach them proper note-taking skills.
The underlying benefit of taking notes during the film is that students will pay attention to details as they decide what is important enough to include in their notes.
By writing down their thoughts while watching the film, they are more likely to have answers they can share later during class discussions.
4 – Create a cause and effect worksheet
A cause and effect worksheet asks students to analyze specific points in the film. You can start with an example, giving them the cause, and then explain how it affected the story.
A basic cause and effect worksheet might start with an event and include a blank space in which students can fill in the effect of that event.
5 – Start and stop the discussion
With this lesson plan idea, you stop the movie at key points so that students can respond as a class to questions posted on the board.
Alternatively, you can choose not to prepare the questions in advance, but instead allow the discussion to unfold organically. By pausing the film to discuss, you can capitalize on the learning moments that emerge in the film.
You can also point out historical inaccuracies in the film. To assess whether this method is effective for your class, track the students who participate in each discussion.
6 – Ask students to write a review
Another way to see how much your students are learning from a movie is to have them write a movie review. Before the movie begins, review the elements of an excellent movie review. Remind them that a movie review should include a description of the movie without detracting from the ending.
Share a selection of well-written movie reviews with the class. To ensure students include pertinent information in their reviews, provide a list of specific elements you expect to see.
7 – Compare and Contrast Movies or Scenes
One way to get students to better understand a scene is to show different film adaptations of the same work. For example, there are several film adaptations of the novel “Frankenstein”.
You can ask students about the director's interpretation of the text or whether the book's content is accurately represented in the film.
If you are showing different versions of a scene, such as a scene from one of Shakespeare's plays, you can deepen the student's understanding by having him/her write down the different interpretations and offer explanations for these differences.
