Many students enjoy watching films (and other forms of motion pictures) in class. It makes our jobs as teachers a little easier. And many of us already know that it takes more than just pressing play when we want to effectively use film to teach. We may already be using viewing guides to help our students key in on important pieces of information. But what else can we do to maximize the learning our students can get from watching a film in our class?
Why Teach With Film
Films are a great vessel for a lot of information. They are often a great way to engage our students and get them to be more immersed in the content. Films use words, moving pictures, images, music, and a variety of other dynamic content to captivate their audience. These are things that would take a herculean amount of time and effort to gather from scratch and incorporate into the lessons we create. I always rejoiced whenever I found films that went well with my lesson objectives.
Limitations of Teaching With Film
Now even though films are very powerful tools for teaching, they do have limitations. Let’s talk about them here and learn how to overcome each obstacle later on in the article.
First, not all films are perfectly aligned to the objectives we want to teach. Many great quality films weren’t tailored for classroom teaching. Now there are many great educational videos out there that were made specifically for the classroom, but they can be quite limited, especially for the social studies classroom. I’ve spent hours upon hours searching and reviewing films for my classroom.It has been quite difficult and time consuming to find ones that perfectly match my objectives, if I even find any. Some films may have something I want to teach, but then they would also have a lot of tangential information that I wouldn’t have time for in class.
When I do find great films, they are sometimes really dense with great quality information. One film can have multiple objectives. And each objective would deserve a lesson on their own. Yet, they’re all packed into one film. For example, the kids love viewing episode 2 of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. But just that one episode covers so many concepts about culture clash, technology, transmission of knowledge, conquest, etc. There’s so much to unpack from just one hour of film!
In addition, depending on the film, the pacing can be really slow or just too fast for intentional, purposeful teaching of objectives. However, fast pacing can be circumvented since you can easily pause and rewind. But what about the viewer experience? And what if the problem is that the pacing is too slow…like some Ken Burns films (which are great, by the way!)?
Another significant limitation of using film for teaching is that viewing films can be a very passive activity. It’s not immediately interactive or built for active thinking. Now, a great quality film should provoke a lot of deep thinking. But if we’re not intentional about giving our students the space and time to process what they view, their thoughts may come and go with no meaningful impact.
Finally, a lot of films are prepackaged with the filmmaker’s views and agenda. There can be a lot of card stacking and no representation of other perspectives. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is a great learning opportunity, especially for social studies. However, I’ve noticed it’s the habit of students (and even some adults) to take in content unquestioningly. They subconsciously treat opinion as truth unless the information is really jarring and challenges their current world view.
So with all of these limitations, is teaching with film just too much hassle and way more work than it’s worth? No way! It’s totally doable and absolutely worth overcoming the obstacles involved. Teaching with film is engaging, introduces so much content and immersion, expands student perspectives, and is still much easier than trying to bring the same amount of dynamic content from scratch into your self-created lesson materials. So let’s go ahead and talk about how to plan and deliver your lessons so that you can teach effectively with film and overcome these obstacles.
How to Plan Lessons With Film
Plan around learning goals.
First and foremost, you should decide on your main objective(s). This will give you direction and focus. It will keep you from being overwhelmed by the content and keep you from being distracted by interesting, but irrelevant/tangential film content.
Analyze the film based on your goals.
Next, analyze the film for your objective(s). How well does it actually delve into the topic(s) you want to explore? Is it actually even worth teaching with or is it mostly just for entertainment? Or maybe it covers a different objective that you do really want to teach but never thought of?
If it does help you with your learning targets, what are the golden nuggets of information you want to bring your students attention to? Write them down with the time stamps (which will be useful later). Or maybe what you want your students to think about are not explicitly within the film but how the film is made or how ideas are expressed within the film. Write down specific details you want them to note and during which points of the film.
Will you show the whole film or just scenes?
Once you’ve figured out how suited the film is for your objectives, you can better decide on whether you should show the whole film or not. Is there a plot that is imperative to understanding the scenes that are important to your objectives? If so, do you need to show the whole film or can you just give the students a quick summary?
Showing Only Certain Scenes
If it’s best to just show certain scenes, write down the specific scenes, the timestamp, and how long each scene is. This will help you with timing, discussion questions, and sequencing for your lesson(s). You may still want to do bell ringers and exit tickets to maintain structure, predictability, and accountability.
Determine the purpose for each snippet with regards to your objectives. Do you need to group them in any particular way? Do you need to show them in a particular order? Design your questions around each snippet or group of snippets. Do you want to call attention to specific information that is explicitly in the clip? Or do you want students to look for patterns and compare? Would you like them to look for things that the clips don’t include?
To prepare showing just snippets of the film, I highly recommend having a window on your computer open for each scene if possible. Each window should have the movie ready to play at the timestamp of its particular scene. This way you won’t waste time searching and fast forwarding through the film and risk students getting distracted during the lesson.
Showing the Whole Film
If you’ve decided on watching the whole film, have a general idea of how much you’re going to be able to show per class period. I still highly recommend having bell ringers and exit tickets to maintain structure and accountability. You can review and analyze content using bell ringers and exit tickets by writing questions about what students saw in the film during the previous class. This will create deeper continuity between each class session and help with retention as well.
Also, do plan for pausing a lot and discussing, which I will talk about in the next section. There have been times where I’ve taken three to four 55-minute class periods to show a one hour film. We would get through maybe 15-20 minutes within each class period because we stop a lot to discuss the viewing guide and to discuss questions that the students generate as they watch.
Please prepare and have a viewing guide.
Regardless of whether you are showing snippets or the whole film, please do have a viewing guide for your students. This will help them focus their attention on the details you want them to think about. You can create your own or find one on the internet. It’s great if you’ve been able to build a culture of having students generate their own questions in your class. If this is the case, your viewing guide can be a simple template with a list of topics or breakdown of your learning goals. Your students can create their own questions to answer using this template.
Plan for discussion.
Which questions do you want to include in a viewing guide for students to actually write answers to? Which questions do you want to just verbally discuss and when? Refer back to the learning objectives to help you craft your questions. Know what answers you want the students to have. Anticipate possible incorrect answers and distractions. Figure out ways you can redirect them to the right answer.
If you are having students generate their own questions, make sure you plan for the space and time to discuss them during the lesson. You should actually have a follow up class session dedicated to just discussing the film, whether students generate their own questions or not.
Obviously, you want to craft discussion questions around your learning objectives, but here are some other tasks and questions you may want students to address in order to help build their critical thinking skills and ability to dissect information.
- Critique/analyze the perspective in the film. Is it presenting the full picture? Or were there possible perspectives that were not shown?
- Analyze any evidence that were presented in the film. Are they real and convincing? Do they properly support whatever claims were being made?
- Analyze how the filmmaker created the film to create an impact or highlight certain ideas. How did they manipulate the viewer’s opinion or attention? Have students pay attention to the storytelling – film angles, color, tone, pauses and pacing, music, close-ups, etc. These give insight to the motivation and purpose of the filmmaker.
Consider having a specific structure to ensure maximum participation. Any structure that has students starting in small groups and then sharing as a whole class works well. It will ensure all students have the opportunity to participate. It will also expose students to the greatest amount of ideas and perspectives.
Deliver the Lesson: Get Your Students to Actively Watch and Interact with the Film
Work within your regular class structure and routines.
When I watched films in school as a student and when I first started showing them in my own classes, our regular routines would be thrown out the window. No notes, no sticking to our seating assignment, eating snacks would be allowed, and people would carry sidebar conversations, etc. This obviously does not work well.
Again, to teach with film effectively, it’s not just about pressing play. For the third time, I highly recommend having bell ringers and exit tickets or whatever routines and informal assessments you may already have in place. This will help students understand that it’s not popcorn and lounging time just because you’re watching a movie. They’re still going to be rolling up their sleeves and turning those gears in their brains.
Start with the learning objective.
Take a few minutes to start the lesson by calling the students’ attention to the learning objective. I usually have them write this as part of their bell ringer activity and we briefly discuss it afterwards.
Preview the film.
Even though you can’t flip through pages and look at titles, headings, subheadings, pictures, etc. like you can in a textbook, you can still preview the film and activate prior knowledge. And you should. But how? Present the students with the title and film poster/dvd cover/thumbnail. You may even choose to show the trailer (unless it reveals too much for your purposes). You can also show a short clip from the film or open with a compelling quote from the film. You can even read some movie reviews. There are quite a few possibilities.
Prepare the students for the viewing guide.
You can also preview by reading and discussing the viewing guide. Make sure that students understand each question or task. Address any questions they may have. This activity will also help them anticipate the information and know when to pause the film if they need to.
Encourage students to generate their own questions about the film.
When you preview, have students generate their own questions about the film. They can be general questions, but also try to direct them to predict or question how the film will tie in to your learning goals. This will help increase their engagement and alertness for important details in the film.
I like to write down their ideas and have it displayed around the room somewhere (I also like to put the initials of the student who came up with each question or prediction). Keeping it all visible helps us to remember their existence. It also makes it easy for us to circle back and discuss at the right time. Any questions we don’t get answers to are ripe fruit for extension activities. Finally, it’s a great way to validate student ideas and exponentially increases motivation and engagement.
Front load any academic vocabulary or concepts.
You can explain these as they come up while you watch the film with your class. But you will already be pausing a lot to discuss your viewing guide and whatever questions the kids may come up with. So it will be good to minimize unnecessary interruptions. It is best if you can talk about certain content in advance. You want to explain straightforward things that students will need to know so that they can think more deeply about the content and/or see the big picture in the context of your learning goals as they watch the film.
Help students anticipate the breaks in the viewing experience.
If they’re not used to it, and you have decided to watch the whole film with the students, warn them that you will be pausing a lot to discuss. Remember, you have specific learning goals. The viewer experience should be conducive to getting you to those goals. It’s not about passively enjoying the film.
Use closed captioning.
When you finally start watching the film (Whew! It takes a lot of prep), make sure that the closed captioning/subtitles are on. This is such a tremendous tool. It reinforces the content and supports language development. Students also tend to remember better when they can hear AND see the words. And I’ve observed that students seem to get a sense of relief and security from being able to see the words so that they can spell it correctly in their answers. This will also help them recognize any new words if they come across it in print later on.
Gradually transfer control to the students.
When my students were first getting used to watching films in my class, I directed a lot of when to pause and a lot of the discussions around the viewing guide, etc. However, I like to gradually release control to them once they get used to what I’m expecting and to the level of quality required. I encourage them to call out “pause please” whenever they want to pause or rewind (because I don’t always see the hand up at the right time).
As they get more used to viewing films with me, we get to the point where I just hand a student the mouse or remote control and I just sit in the back of the room to observe and listen. They make decisions of when to pause and rewind. They discuss the questions with one another. They take the lead. .
What to Do After Viewing
Have that discussion.
Make sure to discuss the film with the students after you’ve viewed it. At the very least, go over the viewing guide and discuss the correct answers together. This will help students process the information and add an opportunity to ruminate upon what they’ve seen.
Revisit any questions and predictions the students generated while the class previewed the film. If it’s relevant, analyze why some predictions worked and some didn’t. Save any unanswered questions for potential extension activities later on in the unit.
Make sure to discuss perspectives and motivations around the film if it’s not already in your viewing guide. Even a brief discussion is really important and relevant to real life.
You should also discuss how new information builds upon any existing knowledge students have or any lessons or concepts you have previously learned in class.
Circle back to the objective.
Make sure to circle back at the end of the lesson and have students evaluate how well they’ve met the objectives. Have them reflect on what went well and what could have gone better and how.
Make a plan for any questions left unanswered.
Were there any questions that came up that the class would like to pursue as an extension activity? Ask for student feedback and decide on next steps.
Conclusion
Teaching with film is truly powerful when we plan and deliver the lesson appropriately. Students will get the benefit of immersion that motion pictures naturally provide. In addition, proper planning and execution will also make the film an interactive activity that promotes critical thinking in our students.
I hope this has been helpful. Do you have other best practices for teaching with film in the classroom? Share them in the comments below!