How Does Film Change Literature?
 
 

By Melissa Williams and Amy Brown 

Overview Intended Audience Statement of Objectives Detailed Activity Description (Class 1) Detailed Activity Description (Class 2) Helpful Links

Overview:  This activity allows children to evaluate and compare both books and movies.  Throughout this lesson students will discover how the media changes story lines and/or dialogues of books in order to create a movie.  The students will have discussions how movies and books (of the same story) can have different effects on society.  Students will use their critical thinking skills to differentiate between the written story and the screen story.  The point of this lesson is to integrate literature with media's presentation of a story.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Intended Audience: This lesson is for second graders who have been exposed to certain books (which will be later compared to the movie made after that book).  The learner should have an objective attitude and be able to compare and contrast.  Students at this level should be able to identify similarities and differences fairly easy.  They should also be able to pick out main characters and other elements of the story.  It may be difficult for them to transfer their classmates stories into movies, but with the aforementioned ability to distunguish story elements, this should be something they can work through.

Statement of Objectives:

Detailed Activity Description:

1. Materials:
 
 


The Tigger Movie





- Book:  Tigger's Family
-  video camera
-  TV
-  VCR
-  Video tapes (for recording)

2. Description of Activity

Day One


    A. TSW read the chosen book and write a response and evaluation of the book (this will include their feelings, plot details, character description, settings, story, and their over-all opinion of the book).  Link to Higher Order Thinking questions that will help with this section.
    B. TSW watch The Tigger Movie and write another evaluation but this time on the movie (the evaluation will be the same format as the book evaluation).  Link to Higher Order Thinking questions that will help with this section.

Link to The Tigger Movie Trailer

Link to online book that the Tigger Movie is based on.
 

    C. Have an in class IC on the similarities and differences of the book and movie (use higher order thinking Questions below to help promote discussion)
                    Higher Order Thinking Questions
                        1. What is the major difference between the main character in the book and the movie?
                        2. What facts or ideas lead to the differences in the main character?
                        3. What approach would you use to make the movie more like the book?  More different?
                        4. What is the things justify the movie being different from the book?
                        5. What can be changed to improve the movie?
                        6. What way would you have designed the movie?
 
 




Day Two

    a.  Students will get into groups of four and create and write a story on subject of their choice
    b. Once each group has written a story the stories will be acted out by a different group (other than the group that wrote each story) The contents of this reenactment will be determined by the students.  They have to decided what needs to be done to accurately portray the story.  Each reenactment will be video taped as if they are making a movie and last 3-5 minutes per group.
    c. Class discussion on how the original stories were changed from the written version and the mini movies, discussion will lead into the connection between activity in part one (student evaluated movies and books) and part two (students became authors and media), and how media changes written text no matter who the author is or the actors are.
    d. For homework TSW construct a Venn diagram on the differences and similarities between media (meaning movies) and the corresponding written text (meaning books or stories)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Links to help in this project

1. The Disney site-This will give you information on the movies and books recommended for this lesson.

2. Welcome to the center for media education- this is a site to aid teachers in media education.

3. Cable in the classroom- this is a link with activities that inspired this lesson; use this site to get more ideas and see how media improves learning.

4. Articles about media education- This aritcle lists terms that will give you a better understanding of media literacy education.