Cue the Suspense: Student Created Movie Trailers

You are in the midst of the most important personal and professional challenge of your life.  Everyone doubted your abilities at the outset, but you've actually had more successes than anyone expected... perhaps even beyond what you believed yourself.  You could win this thing!

This was the thinking of General Robert E. Lee in 1863 as he planned to go north and execute a stunning victory in enemy territory. Gettysburg.

Unfortunately for Lee, Gettysburg would turn out to be a devastating blow to the Confederacy, and it would be just the thing President Lincoln needed to rededicate the Union cause.  So my students needed to find out why.

Why was Gettysburg a turning point in the Civil War?

Just as the opening paragraph of this post was meant to create suspense around the Battle of Gettysburg, I want my students to see the drama and suspense behind every document and piece of evidence we study in class. What creates suspense more than movie trailers? Here's how we made our own dramatic classroom productions.

Activator: Setting the Stage


We are in the middle of the Civil War unit, so I wanted students to recall the important background'/historical context to understand the significance of Gettysburg.  In small groups, students looked back at their digital notes in Evernote to recall answers to these questions:
  • Based on our Civil War scavenger hunt, which side was winning the war in the East throughout the beginning of the war? How do you know?
  • Based on the infographic activity, which side had the statistical advantage at the outset of the war? Give at least one example.
Instead of going around the room and asking each group to answer the questions aloud, we put them on a Padlet, a digital bulletin board.  This way no further class discussion was needed.  Everyone posted their answers and checkout other groups' answers.


Analysis: Researching the Roles


The class sorted themselves into 4 groups.  Each chose one of the four documents for the DBQ Project's materials on Gettysburg.  Also provided were some guiding questions that get students to go through the process of identifying the source, bias, and purpose of each piece of evidence.  Finally, they had to develop an answer to the question, "Why was Gettysburg a turning point in the Civil War?" based on that one document.  I either gave them approval or asked more question to get them to add detail to their answer.

Production: Building Suspense


On the second day of the lesson I started by showing them especially compelling movie trailers from YouTube.  Then I gave them a quick (like less than a minute) tutorial on iMovie's movie trailer feature.

This was the best part of the lesson.  They were excited to produce something so engaging, but in the process I overheard them talking about the way word choice in the Gettysburg Address inspired hope, and the tone of sadness in Gen. Lee's letter to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.  The in-depth document analysis that was happening in these small groups was really astounding.

They had 30 minutes to produce their trailers.  We spent that last 15 minutes of class viewing and discussing the results.







The kids applauded one another and whispered things like, "Wow! That was really good!" and "Now I'm kind of scared of what it was really like in the battle."  It is gratifying to know they enjoyed the lesson, but their learning is the most important goal.  These 10th graders can confidently explain why Gettysburg was a turning point in the Civil War.  More importantly, they understand how to analyze history in a way that looks beyond facts to the human emotions, strengths, and weaknesses of the people who lived it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Social Media Starter Tips

Image
Note: This post was recently  published on the St. John's Prep GOOD to Go blog . Chad Konecky interviewed me and wrote the post based on our discussion. Demonstrating and reinforcing common-sense social media engagement is important, especially when it comes to adolescents and teens. Kerry Gallagher, St. John’s assistant principal for teaching and learning, is leading the Prep’s emphasis on developing best practices when using social media. “Mentoring healthy guidelines like ‘Think before you post,’ ‘be kind and respectful’ and ‘be mindful of who you friend’ are key, but we need to foster—and the boys need to hone—an even keener sense of their life online.” Interestingly, the challenges of building an online identity can become even more difficult if students and their parents choose not to use social media, explains Gallagher. Alternatively, when students do create an online presence, it can become an opportunity to learn how to act appropriately and with accountability....
Read more

Guest Post: Digital + Traditional = Teaching at Its Best

Image
Rachel Salinger is a high school English teacher at my school, St. John's Prep in Danvers, Massachusetts. She is passionate about literature and about giving her students learning experiences that arm them with the skills they need to be thoughtful and good stewards of our future. I asked her to share her recent project on my blog because I think it is a stellar example of how traditional teaching and learning strategies can be effectively combined with digital tools for a deeper student learning experience. I referenced this project briefly in my recent EdSurge column and wanted to be sure to highlight it in detail on my blog. Introduction In my CP sophomore classes, we read Macbeth over the course of a few weeks. The students really enjoyed the play (surprisingly!) and I wanted to do a more creative assessment at the end instead of a typical paper or test. In the past, I’ve done an iMovie project with Macbeth but really wanted to do something different this year. I met...
Read more

Teaching 19th Century Ideologies with 21st Century Technologies

Image
Some concepts are just hard.  They're hard to teach and hard to learn.  Every year that I've taught the History 10 curriculum to sophomores, one of those concepts has been 19th century European political ideologies.  Conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism have never really been pulled together into a lesson that excited me or my students.  We would work through it and we'd both be OK, but never enthralled.  This year I wanted to change that. Part 1: What Do They Already Know? I asked students to define and give examples of each term: conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism.  They used their understandings from a modern American perspective.  We talked it out and they wrote their examples on the Smart Board. Part 2: How Was 19th Century Europe Different? It was REALLY different.  Before going there, though, I wanted them to know what an ideology is. The next step was to help them understand what these ideologies mean to 19th century ...
Read more