A movie review…

So I’m sure you know that teacher who shows movies all the time.  I have a really hard time with this.  I feel like the kids deserve better – I mean at least during Centres Time they are working on Social skills right?  But being a Zombie and watching a movie is not educationally sound.   But I do really enjoy Read Alouds, and a lot of my favourite children’s novels have become movies.  And seeing as most kids these days are really dialed in to movies and TV, they truly enjoy watching movies in class. 

But how to justify it pedagogically???

Well I read my class Charlotte’s Web.  I have the 50th anniversary edition which has coloured pictures and much larger pictures from the original publication.  There’s also an appendix which gives a lot of information and pictures of EB White and how he wrote Charlotte’s Web.

Then I stumbled upon this freebie from Ashley Hughes last year.  I cannot find a link to this file anywhere on Teachers Pay Teachers.  But I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this download.

First I read them the story, then we watched the movie. 

Then we took a few days to complete the booklet.

I printed out colour copies of the DVD case for them to glue on

They LOVED it.

This page was great because it starts out about Vocabulary, and that’s an important part of Charlotte’s Web .

Of course, listing the characters showed understanding of the story.

Analyzing the parts of the story meant we needed to discuss the setting.

I especially loved this part about making connections…

 And then of course, choice and choosing the favourite part of the story is an important critical thinking skill

And then the all important skill of making connection was a part of this packet.

Talk about fantastic.  I am currently reading Pippi Longstocking, and I can’t wait to show them the movie and then analyze the story.