Film Adaptations - bringing text to life

Back in the day (er, when I was in high school) a "chill day" was when the teacher would pop in the video of the book you were reading and you would get to just sit back and relax. Substitute teachers were almost always relegated to the world of "movie monitor" when they would come in to sub, as there were no constructive activities planned around the "time killing" movie. But those days are no more!

I am so excited about the incorporation of film as text in the classrooms - from viewing to creating, this is truly a wonderful way to allow all students to access the text while still working on literacy and comprehension skills. There are many different opportunities to create skill-based assessments with rigorous objectives using film adaptations, iMovie, ComicLife and a variety of other methods.

An idea I had for using both iMovie and film adaptations would be to assign small groups to particular scenes in a book - ones that are prolific scenes in the film adaptation. Small groups would be tasked with creating a storyboard and script for the scene they have been assigned showing how they would turn the words into a movie. If there are cameras available, students would be asked to then videotape the scene as they have written it and edit the movie in iMovie. Groups would be assigned sequential plot points in order to create the entire story - the teacher would edit the different groups' videos together to create one film adaptation created by the class. Students would view the film and critique the different representations of character, point of view, honesty of the plot, creative interpretation, etc. Once this has been completed, students will watch the Hollywood film adaptation of the book and compare their scripts to the Hollywood version.

One other really exciting idea I would love to use in my classroom would be to create Digital Stories using VoiceThread or iMovie. When Liz Boeser was in earlier this semester, I was engaged with all of the different skills students would work on in creating perfect still photos. For this exercise, I would have students create a summer of the book (or maybe just a chapter) we have read and make a seven slide summary of the book (of course the number of slides could be any number - the less slides, the greater the challenge!). Students would need to identify the key plot points of the story, the main characters in each plot point, and the message each character is sending at that point in the book. For each key plot point (8 total), students will create a storyboard for the photo they will be taking. The photo should include people to represent each character involved and props to help communicate the message. Students will then create dialogue for each of the characters in order to communicate the main points being conveyed by the photo. When all of the storyboards have been completed the students will create their photos, upload them to VoiceThread, and then add the dialogue to the photos (in dramatic fashion). Voila! Seven Slide Summaries! Students would share their VTs with one another and critique the chosen key points, representation of characters, chosen photo setting/set up/design, etc.