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Teaching Literature and Science with Videos

Enhancing Reading Skills with Video

Teaching Literature and Science with Videos By Ron Person

Movies and video documentaries can be indispensable for motivating learners, engaging their curiosity, and embedding concepts that might otherwise slip away. Even reading and literature can be enhanced and strengthened through the use of videos.

Children may have inertia getting started in a book, but a movie or video can motivate them to learn more and entice early readers to dig into a book. If they have basic reading skills that need exercise and motivation, then use a movie to get their momentum up to speed. For example, the Chronicles of Narnia, a children's classic, are available in both VHS and DVD. Play the first of the trilogy, "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe", to get a child intrigued. Then let them know there are two more books in the series, "Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" and "The Silver Chair." You might even troll for readers by leaving the next book in the series lying where they will see it.

A number of great children's authors have had only a single movie made from their large collection of written works. Use the movie to entice your young reader, then show them the other books by the author. Some excellent examples of movies that lead to additional books are "The Little Princess" or "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, "The Black Stallion" by the prolific Walter Farley, and "James and the Giant Peach" or "Matilda" by the prolific and wacky Roald Dahl.

Reading or watching a movie with children shouldn't be passive. Make it thought provoking and inquisitive. Stop at major points and ask your child what they would do if they were in the character's position, then continue the movie to see what the character does.

You might create interactive checklists that keep your kids thinking as the movie progresses. For example, in "Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader" the characters change their behavior and personality as the story progresses. Have your children create a Character Report Card that helps them learn about character traits, character depth, and character analysis.

Your graders should assign an A through F grade to each character's trait. You might even want two charts, one for the character's trait at the beginning of the movie and one for the end. Discussing how they graded each character and why the grade changed gives you an excellent chance to discuss personality, ethics, and personal growth.

Teaching Classic Literature with Video
Movies based on classic literature can be used to entice readers as well as act as a structure for discussion. In the same way that videos can entice a young reader into a book, teenage readers can be enticed via video into classic literature such as David Copperfield, Moby Dick, and Romeo and Juliet.

A number of literary works have been turned into movies that will captivate teens of either sex. Movies enable them to see the clothes, hear the music, and listen to the dialect of the time period. Here are a few movies based on classics that might entice teen readers into reading the full book or other books by the same author:

• Romeo and Juliet, By William Shakespeare (Paramount)
• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte (A&E)
• Emma, by Jane Austen (A&E)
• Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (Columbia Tristar)
• David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (WGBH or Brentwood)
• Moby Dick, by Hermann Melville (Artisan or MGM)
• Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo by Andres Dumas (Disney Touchstone)

Some movies, especially those by Disney and their adult movie producer Touchstone, are loosely based on the book. In those cases use the movie as a base to discuss why the producers made changes and how the book provides more detail, more character insight, and is more faithful to the real historical events.

Teens may feel that the book topic is old fashioned and hard to relate to. However, I know a number of cases where teens were sucked into the books because their feelings were the same as those felt by the characters in the classics. The heartaches felt in Little Women and the feelings of revenge in The Count of Monte Cristo haven't changed through time.

If it's been a long time since you've read some of these classic books a movie can give you a structure for discussion. You can both sit and watch the movie and pause it for discussion when you or your teen feel there is something important to discuss. Try to pause and discuss at least every 20 minutes. Some research shows that this helps us remember.

Teaching Hands-On Science with VideoMovies are great adjuncts to teaching science. How else could most of us see the earth from inside a space station, view strange creatures miles beneath the ocean, or walk next to molten lava. And for those of us without a science background documentaries give us a base from which we can teach and create hands-on projects.

One multi-sensory approach to teaching science is to combine the following elements:

1. Motivate and get an overview of the topic by showing a science video
2. Gain detailed knowledge by reading short science texts
3. Understand by conducting and analyzing hands-on science experiments
4. Research additional information on the Web
5. Write a report about what they learned

Let's use weather as an example. Videos showing real examples of extreme weather and its effects are:

• Stormchaser from IMAX showing scientists at work as they fly inside dangerous storms.
• Wild Weather from BBC showing wind, water, summer, and winter through real films and animation.
• Nature's Fury from National Geographic showing tornadoes, hurricanes and floods and their devastation. It includes computer graphics that illustrate the cause of the 1993 Mississippi floods.

These videos show children how weather systems are immense and can be dangerous. You can pique their interests by asking them how weather like that gets created. After reading a few text extracts about weather they can do experiments so they can actually create their own weather. (On a kitchen table scale.) The combination of seeing huge storms and making their own weather is memorable and fun.

To teach how the heat from the sun creates vertical ocean and wind currents, fill a pie pan with room temperature water. Wait until the water is still then put carefully put ice cubes on opposing sides of the pan. Weight them in place if they float. Wait for the water to become still and then put a drop of dark food coloring next to each ice cube. Watch how the cold water makes a current sucking the food coloring to the bottom and pulling it the pan's center. It then returns along the top. Have your kids look at a globe and ask them how the polar ice caps and equatorial sun cause the same effect in the ocean. Ask how the sun warms the air over land compared to the air over a lake and if that might cause the air to move (wind) like the water in the pie pan.

To see how the spinning earth and the shape of the continents cause currents, fill the same pie pan and put it on a lazy susan or a surface where you can slowly spin the pan. Put in a few odd shaped blocks or cookie cutters that will act as continents separating the "oceans". Wait for the water to still. Now sprinkle oregano on top of the water. Slowly spin the pie pan and watch how the oregano moves around the "continents" just like ocean currents. Now get an atlas and look for an ocean current map. The similarity between the "oregano currents" and ocean currents is amazing.

Finally, create your own rainstorm in your kitchen. Cool a large cookie tin in the freezer until it is very cold. Start a tea kettle boiling until you see steam coming out. Now with a gloved hand pull the cookie pan and hold it horizontally 2 or 3 inches over the steam spout. Sometimes an actual cloud will form and you will always get "rain" dripping off the cold cookie tin. This is the same as warm moist air from the ocean being pushed over cold air or being pushed up a cold mountain. The result is rain.

Families -- and holidays -- are often less-than-perfect, but you can make the most of your times together by planning ahead, accentuating the positive, and downplaying any little incidents that may have (in the past!) caused family strife. If you lower your expectations just a little, a great time can be had by all!

Finding the Movies You Need
I've just been to Blockbuster, the national video rental chain, and wandered through the aisles looking for documentaries and titles from National Geographic, IMAX, and BBC. I came away appalled. In the last few months this national chain has cleared out titles that aren't aimed at Hollywood's mass-market. +D31

Here are some alternatives for getting the non-Hollywood videos you need for teaching:

• Check with your local non-chain video stores. Many of them have a broader range of non-Hollywood titles than the chain stores.
• Check eBay or Half.Com for used VHS or DVD titles you can buy online.
• Group together with other parents and teachers and share the purchase price of new videos. You can buy online directly from most producers or from www.amazon.com. Companies such as National Geographic, BBC, and PBS sell over the Web. Do a web search for the producer, then look in the website's Store or search for VHS or DVD with the website's Search box.

Keep your kids engaged and awestruck with the joy of learning.

Ron Person is the author of more than 28 books published in 18 countries. He has owned an adult training company, volunteer teaches as an elementary science teacher, and has an MS and MBA.