Want to engage students in reading comprehension? Start with short films
“What is a text?”
This is one of the first questions that I ask my fifth grade students at the beginning of the school year. Typically their answers include a book or an article; some form of print on the page. I start a chart listing their responses and set it aside. A few weeks later after analyzing short films, we look at the chart again and consider the following:
When we viewed these films, did we…
State claims?
Provide evidence to support our claims?
Give reasons why the evidence is important?
“Yes? So, could a short film be considered a text?”
Heads nod.
I love this moment. I feel like a magician pulling a rabbit out of my hat! Surprise, you have been reading these films!
Scaffolding Students’ Literary Analysis
Before this revelation about films, we spend a few weeks viewing, discussing and writing about them. I use the following teaching moves to guide our process.
We watch and enjoy the film together.
I scaffold text interpretation, using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), by asking students:
What is going on in this film?
What do you see that makes you say that?
What else do you see?
We watch the film a second time with a few claims in mind. I suggest that students jot notes in their reading notebook so that they can refer to them during our class discussion.
I facilitate a whole class discussion and replay important parts per students request. Just as we reread printed texts, we “re-watch” parts of the film in search of evidence to support claims. Hence, we have purposeful close reading!
***For more on Visual Thinking Strategies, check out the article by Edutopia linked here.
Claim, Evidence, Reason and Written Response
The VTS questions support students in stating a claim about a text, providing evidence to support it, and explaining the reasons it is important. This process, called Claim, Evidence, Reason (CER), is a critical strand in state education standards for students in Grades 3-12. Below is an anchor chart I created with students following their analysis and discussion of the short film, Snack Attack.
Senatore 2024
Your lesson could end with charting or having students jot down some new insights about the film. You could also extend the lesson to include short written response like the example below. Once students gain confidence in short response, they practice on their own by supporting another claim from the same film. I support students who need more help in small groups.
Senatore, 2024
Transitioning to Printed Text
This leads me to the main reason I love teaching reading comprehension with short films. Yes, the films are engaging, but what makes this work so powerful is that is it’s accessible to ALL students regardless of reading ability. With films, you take away the barrier of print and get right to the work of interpretation. Once students have learned and practiced analytical skills with short films, they are ready to analyze written texts. Below is a possible sequence from texts with images to texts with print for students’ verbal and written analysis.
Senatore, 2024
Whether analyzing short films or novels, it is critical to create spaces where students co-construct meaning and learn from one another in whole class and small group settings. Starting this process with short films scaffolds the complexities of literary analysis and interpretation and yields more engaged and skilled student readers and writers.
