1. Scaffold for short answer questions
Ad Council comes out with lots of short, 30 second spots in the classroom. These can be used as quick, whole-class texts for teaching students how to write short answer questions.
EX: For Adoption from Foster Care - Cookies, How do flashbacks enhance the overall message of the video?
2. Introduce a literary concept
This is particularly good at the beginning of the year if you have not yet read a text that includes the concept and you need to teach what it is to prime students for the text you are about to read.
The YouTube video "SQUIRT - Finding Nemo ...Totally..." is a great way of teaching the idea of foil character. After introducing the definition of foil, ask the class "How does the relationship between Crush and Squirt act as a foil for Marlin and Nemo?"
3. Quick genre study
We read The Giver, a dystopian novel that I usually describe as 1984 for kids. A simple clip from Wall-E allows me to introduce types of dystopian controls before we get into the much denser novel. I bring in similar clips from trailers for movies like Gattaca and Elysium as we read The Giver to analyze dystopian protagonist, characteristics of a dystopia, etc.
4. Tone and Mood
Many ELA teachers are familiar with the Mary Poppins tone/mood mini lesson, but now with Frozen's new horror movie recut we can update our lessons with something a bit more familiar. (Warning! Soapbox moment: The way someone manipulates video - with music and sound effects - isn't really something that I feel directly translates into reading and writing where it is more diction, syntax, and imagery. However, in Texas we specifically have a TEK in middle school that deals directly with lighting and sound effects analysis. I do, though, feel that there is a great leap between video and the written word when it comes to how tone/mood is crafted. I would not do this to get into poetry or prose analysis because they are so dissimilar. But doing it with a video like this and then analyzing tone/mood in a play like "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street", perfect!)
5. Metaphor/Symbol/Allegory Analysis
You know how you can strengthen your biceps with chin-ups as well as curls? Those amazing neural pathways our students use to infer, think critically, think imaginatively, they are the same paths regardless of what they are having to infer or think about. Using an allegorical music video (I use John Lennon's "Imagine" during my utopia/dystopia webquest) and having students analyze what various parts mean is great practice that can be applied to other symbolic laden texts. (Imagine what it would be like to use this before you analyzed the allegorical elements of Lord of the Flies and then after the lesson have students right a fictional conversation between Golding and Lennon!)
6. Intertextual Links
We have a really vague standard in Texas in Figure 19F: make intertextual links among and across
texts, including other media (e.g., film, play), and provide textual evidence. So my very favorite paring is with Langston Hughes "Thank You, Ma'am" and this short film called "Second Line". I make the students figure out why I pair them and write about it. Even though it take a while to watch the short film, the message is wonderful, the kids are able to hit high level analysis with the symbolism, and the thematic connection to "Thank You, Ma'am" challenges them. I suggest reading TYM first, show the video, let students talk about it in small groups and whole class share about it, and then give them the writing assignment of "How is the video thematically linked to TYM?"
What other videos are your go to videos in class? What other skills do you teach/reinforce/scaffold with video clips?
