Film Lesson Plans

Students conduct oral history interviews and research primary resources to explain changes in immigration and migration over time.

Students write a dialogue in script form to dramatize a conversation.  In this dialogue writing instructional activity, students define dialogue and analyze its influence on plot and character.  Students then practice writing dialogue for various scenarios. 

Students discuss the purpose of city symphonies that were used in the past. In groups, they compare and contrast the social systems of a school and city to create their own city symphony video together. They also write what is known as a treatment in the present tense to introduce the characters and setting. They record their video and present it to the class.

Eighth graders discover how the late Middle Ages influence present society. Among the discussions, they compare aids in Africa with the Black Plague of the Middle Ages. In pairs, 8th graders create fairy tales reflecting life during the Middle Ages.

Eighth graders compare the movie and book of Where The Wild Things Are. In this literature lesson, 8th graders write an essay describing how the book and movie compared and contrasted. They analyze the elements of fiction in each. 

Fourth graders analyze statistics of Native Americans by creating graphs.  In this data analysis instructional activity, 4th graders define different statistical terms and practice finding those statistics from groups of numerical information about Aboriginal populations.  Students create circle and line graphs to analyze the data properly.

Students review photographs and create a timeline of events related to the Holocaust. For this WWII lesson, students match photographs with events and identify key locations on historical maps. Students graph population changes over time and view film clips on concentration camps.

Students create a political cartoon or advertisement. In this lesson analyzing media, students analyze Doonesbury cartoons. After, students create their own political cartoon or advertisement regarding a current controversial issue.

Students discuss the difference between independent films and and films produced by a major studio. They select an independent filmmaker to research and begin their research from a list of given Web sites. When research is complete, they create a visual display such as a poster, scrapbook, or slide show presentation highlighting the career of the filmmaker.

Have your class examine the work of Gordan Parks. They determine how Park's childhood in Kansas inspired his artwork as they analyze his writings and photographs. Students complete the provided worksheets as they compare, contrast, and analyze the works.