Short Films / Big Ideas #2

In the last edition of Short Films / Big Ideas we looked at Spike Jonze's award winning video for Arcade Fire's The Suburbs and how students can interpret how Jonze's visuals go with Arcade Fire's words. If you didn't get our last edition, or haven't had a chance to read it, you can see it at our blog here.

This week we're thinking about creative writing tasks. One of our favourite creative writing tasks here at Ticking Mind is to get students to imagine the daily life of an ordinary object and to write a narrative or journal entry about it. We can use short films to provide examples and inspiration for this activity. One example of this is The Life and Death of a Pumpkin. A mock horror short film (5 mins) that looks at the terror of a pumpkin who leads an 'idyllic life' before his insides are carved out for halloween. The clip can be viewed on Youtube here.

A more serious and longer example is Plastic Bag which tells the story of a plastic shopping bag that led a contented life with its owner before it was discarded. It can be viewed here. The link between these two films is how we consume, exploit and throwaway the ordinary things around us. And this is the type of thing we want our students to think about when we get them to think about life according to ordinary objects - what are humans really like from the perspective of non-human things.

As a footnote, for those of you who do units on Science Fiction or Future Worlds at any year level, you might like to check out this website: http://www.futurestates.tv/. The short film Plastic Bag is actually part of a series called Future States commissioned by US television station ITVS. ITVS has asked leading film makers to make short films about life in the future of America. Although its American, many of the aspects explored in these short films are universal. All the short films can be viewed at the website.

Ticking Mind Bulletin #5 2011

In previous weeks we have been writing about great Web 2.0 tools to use for writing. These have included vocabulary tools and fun tools for generating mock newspapers, t-shirts and movie posters. 

This week we would like to talk about tools for quality writing tasks. What are quality writing tasks? Short writing tasks that get students to focus on the quality of what they saying and not be distracted by having to reach a certain quantity of output. One tool we really like for this is online word magnets. UK education outfit Primary Teach It have a great tool that can be used here.

This tools allows you to type in a number of sentences and then turn each word and punctuation point into a magnet which can then be moved about. See the picture below.

This tool can be used to get students practising sentence structure. Have them type in two sentences describing their day so far. Once they have generated the words into magnets, get them to experiment and see how many different ways they can structure the sentence - which is the best? They can also experiment with punctuation. Get them to add punctuation marks you would like them to experiment with. If you have an interactive whiteboard in one of your rooms - this is an ideal whole class activity. Each student can take a turn moving the words around to create a different sentence structure.

We can also encourage students to look for more interesting synonyms for the words they have used in their sentences. Synonyms don't necessarily need to be bigger or more sophisticated. Thsrs is an interesting thesaurus tool that lists only shorter synonyms for a word you enter. It is ideal for weaker students because they will know most of the synonyms that the tools lists, and also for stronger students in teaching them that longer words aren't always the best words.

Finally, a fun way to get students writing and concentrating on quality is to use Folding Story. This is an elegant online version of the folding game (where students each write a sentence, fold the paper and pass it on - creating hilarious nonsense stories). This site gives students limited time and limited characters to write a response and then 'fold it'. Students will need to create a free account first to use the tool. 

Stay tuned for our next bulletin where we will preview Web 2.0 tools to use to help students with their argumentative writing.

Regards,

The Ticking Mind Team

Short Films / Big Ideas # 1 2011

Anyone who has been to one of our PDs will know that we are big on teaching teen film - for the important reason that teenagers are interested in other teenagers. We're also fans of Spike Jonze - director of Where The Wild Things Are (great for teaching at Years 7-9 by the way) here at Ticking Mind. Before he became a feature film director Jonze actually directed music videos. A few years ago he returned to the genre to direct a music video for Arcade Fire's - The Suburbs. His video is really less a music video than a short film and goes by the title Scenes from The Suburbs. It can be seen below (or watch it at Youtube here):

Jonze's video looks at the boredom of teenagers living in the suburbs and the violence that can stem from this. It would make an ideal study in the 8-10 classroom. There are a few ways the text can be studied.


1. Watch through the video and ask students to summarise the story.
2. Read the lyrics to the song here and ask students how the lyrics link to the film.
3. Ask students to respond with some writing to this topic: Being bored and wanting to rebel is a natural part of any teenager's life. All teenagers are like those in the film.


Stay tuned for more ideas on how to teach short films shortly.

Mind Alarm #4 2011

In our last epistle we looked at how you can use a newspaper clipping generator in your classroom to engage students with writing. If you didn't see this post, visit our blog to see the previous incarnations of our bulletin by clicking here.

Believe it or not, there are dozens and dozens of web 2.o tools on the internet dedicated to generating fake things that look real - from signs posts, bill boards, magazine covers to movie posters. The Generator Blog (click on the link to go there) contains a comprehensive list of sites (over one hundred) which generate things like these. Another great place to find generators is from Wet Paint Web 2.0 Education Tools. Here are two of our favourites and how you might use them in the classroom:

T-Shirt Generator:

This works well at Years 7-9. Ask students to design an advertising campaign or a slogan for an issue they think is important (like bullying or the environment). Get them to put the slogan with a picture on a t-shirt then ask them to do some writing or a presentation tot he class explaining why this will be an effective slogan.

Movie Poster Generator:

This works well at any year level. For junior year levels, students can work on their understanding of genre by designing a poster for their own fake comedy, science fiction or action film. What do different posters look like for different genres? Why? For older students, they can take a break from the serious work of text response analysis by design funny film posters for mock film adaptations of the novels they are studying.

Coming up this week is our English Graduate Teachers' Day Out - if you're a grad or have grad English colleagues, this session is a great way to get practical resources and ideas on all aspects of teaching English.

The following week we will be doing sessions on How To Teach Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Future Worlds and Justice as Creating & Presenting Units at Year 10 or 11. For details and bookings, click here.

By the way, if you like these emails, pass it onto your colleagues. They can join our mailing list by clicking here.

Mind Alarm #3 2011

There's simply an endless amount of great Web 2.0 tools out there that are useful in the English classroom. Over the next few weeks, we want to concentrate on ones that are useful tools for engaging students in writing.

Here at Ticking Mind, one of our favourite tools is the newspaper clipping generator. You can see the results of one of our efforts below:

We generated this mock clip using this web 2.0 tool: http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

There are a few ways this can be used in your 7-10 classrooms. Write an article of your own, bring it into class, and see if you can trick your students into thinking it's a real article. Now set your students the same task -but they need to trick their other teachers or their parents.

Otherwise, this tool can be used simply to write authentic looking newspaper articles as part of a unit on newspaper writing (or simply as a fun activity on Friday afternoon!)

Starting from next week, we'll be keeping a blog on short films called - Short Films, Big ideas, which gives suggestions about how to use short films in class to get students writing about some of the big questions in life.

Here's a link to a funny short Australian film we've been keeping our eye on lately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzg2jjH2z8E

It's called 'Reach,' and shows what happens to a little robot who is prevented from moving beyond a small radius because of the cord that plugs him into a power socket. It's a great short for inspiring students to write about their goals and the blockers. What do they want to 'reach' for - what prevents them?