Integrated Media PBL

Also see my recent post with lesson details on the intro project I used this year to integrate digital media and literary analysis. 

Attended my C.A.T.E. conference workshop? Here’s the Supporting Resources: CATE Slideshow  CATE Handout and accompanying links: Lesson Planning Handout, #1 Directions and Scoring Doc, #2 13 Colony Project Reflection doc, #5 2-page ELA Final Project Directions doc, #5 Student sample video of Final Project

What does your year look like? You had to ask, didn’t you? Ok… it’s your fault this page got so long then, just so everybody’s clear on that. One idea for a 5-Step progression of projects throughout a year with student examples below:

  • Project Level 1: Basic individual video. (although this year I totally blew that up with the project on annotating a short film.
  • Project Level 2: Collaborative group projects to share and be more adventurous with ideas.
  • “Project” Level 3: Surprise! No project. Use short films and professional podcasts as text that you do close reads with.
  • Project Level 4: Integrate and apply.
  • Project Level 5: FREEDOM! Consider personal passion video, etc., with emphasis on agency and action.

Project Level 1

First project: Poetry Narration Project. Level 1. Directions and Scoring document again

Project Level 2

Second Video Project we did: 13 Colonies Ad Project.

Project #2: Video projects like the 13 colony project can be a learning opportunity, not a summative task. This was about collaboration and tech skills. Skills practiced: speed up drawing, insert video from other sites, etc. This is a good place for a discussion on copyright rules in education. Note: Students in this group totally missed that Georgia DID have slavery, just not for the whole time as a colony: they banned it at one point, but allowed it later. We talked about this further in class. This is why I don’t love the colony project as a summative project- there isn’t enough time to go as in depth as I’d like. For grading (ewe), I gave individual scores based on how well they worked together- so I focused more on the collaborative skills and attempt at new tech skills. Students watched them all together and gave feedback on how well each group did on the educational versus entertainment scale. Here’s the feedback sheet I gave students to use for scoring themselves again.

Project #2 alternative/additional project: See below for Jackson history project. Purpose: to practice filming. Creative license for the most part. It had been a hard year: my kids needed something fun to reconnect to each other. After dealing with the fires in Santa Rosa and evacuating through flames at 2:00am, burning many homes in our attendance area but miraculously left all schools standing, we were closed for 3 weeks. They weren’t handling taxing emotional stuff very well, or death, go figure. So they processed it through humor. I was fine with that. I let them play to process.

Project #2 Idea: Andrew Jackson: Hero or Villain?
Project #2 another example. Let them play sometimes. Later, referred back to as learning lesson of media’s portrayal of natives over time. They got it then, but not quite yet at the time of this video. It’s a process.

Project Level 3

3rd Project: Isn’t a project. Use short films like the ones below as text and have students start analyzing profesh stuff. Kylene Beers and Bob Probst’s Notice and Note program (really anything they write is gold) works nicely as areading/analysis still practice. Find more on the Notice and Note Facebook group! So helpful!

The Present: Character development/conflict, theme, elements of plot, storytelling techniques like how to tell a story before a shift, then a completely different story after the shift/new awareness.
Another great piece of media to “read” closely for “project” level 3. Clueless clip.

Clueless clip for Project Level 3: Author’s choices and things to notice: narration, character doing mundane things, placement of flashbacks, slow motion of flashback for emphasis, aha moment with narration now being spoken by character and fountain change. These are obvious author’s choices that students begin to internalize. Find video clips exemplifying reading and writing strategies you want to work on.

Consider sentence level support, especially for EL students by using sentence frames like this: By (evidence), the director (impact on meaning. Example: By ending the film with a voice-over from Thomas asking the question, “how can we forgive our fathers?” the director reminds the audience of the central theme.  (Smoke Signals). 
(Students noticed the narration at the end. I used this as an example to work on sentence level analysis skills and continue to push them to answer “So what?” For more on this strategy, read James and James’ Method to the Madness.)

The narration at the end emphasizes the theme.

Project Level 3… More ideas: Radiolab’s Limits episode is great 1st podcast to start with- listen to first act and pause and model noticing what’s different about a podcast than just say reading this on paper? Start with the obvious and work from there, building as you continue listening and pausing.

Do Listen Twice with comedian Mike Birbiblia: Of Mice and Men episode (not that Of Mice and Men)

Radiolab and NPR’s WORDS (association).
Project Level 3… Don’t forget to use media from other young people. This is 13 year old Ajai from Youthspeaks.

These videos begin to show students where you can go next with video. What will they think of next???

Project Level 3: Another great Youthspeaks poet media project by teenager Yujane.

Project Level 4

Project #4: Start creating projects again. Can be individual, pairs, or groups, whatever you want, but increase the rigor here. I recommend integrating into a subject areas at this stage or using video to apply their analysis skills. Give them something to use their skills to deepen.

For ELA: Ira Glass from This American Life discusses the idea of adding imagery to his podcasts like this animated cover of the New Yorker as beginning with literal images, and then shifting to figurative images to tell two stories at once. Here’s my lame example for 8th grade students. Am I a perfect film maker? No. *Crawls into little ball and yells don’t judge me*. But I got my point across, I think. My two stories at once are when at about 48 seconds, I liken the repeated mistakes of the Big Bad Wolf as a student who continues to forget their homework.

The next day I showed students this example, which starts figurative, and then shifts to the literal. Also just beautifully done. It’s ok to cry every time you watch it, too; it doesn’t get any easier.

Yes, a shaving commercial. But SO good!

Project #4… For Science: See my podcasting slideshow on personifying an element collaborative project with the science teacher.

Audiobooth made from Walmart and acoustic panels from Amazon. See podcast slideshow for lots of details.

Project Level 5

Project #5: FREEDOM! Consider my 2-page ELA final project directions page. My focus: Theme- what is a life lesson you live by? Show us about it in your project. Raise the expectations by telling them they should want to share their project at the end because it is important!

I didn’t show the whole thing (gotta save SOME stuff) but basically, he ends up going down the hill, overcoming his fear. It’s beautiful.
She turned it around. What life lessons do YOU live by, and involved her family.

By Project #5, students were eager to make something of their own, from their own place of creativity. They were more adventurous with their storytelling strategies. They considered their audience, and the impact their video might have on them. They had a level of sophistication I had not seen, and they were now applying them in their reading and writing, too. All the overlapping and weaving of literacy and analysis became just English Language Arts, with the Arts still capitalized. It was genuine, and important work we did that year. For the last project, these skills were all in them, and they now had a purpose with which to utilize them. I didn’t need to coach them on skills anymore. I just had to get out of their way. And it was bananas.

Beyond Level 5

Beyond Project Step #5: Show them what professionals are doing next. Here’s Ira Glass: self-recording, turned into an interview podcast, then an opera performance with narration.

What will they think of next? This is an interview of high school students, turned musical by none other than Lin Manuel Miranda and some of his Hamilton cast, before they were the Hamilton folks.

Please please please buy the cast album! So good!

Have ideas worth sharing? I like it. Message me! Let’s collaborate!

Um… It’s over? Go home? Bueller?