I’m trying to establish a Movie Adaption Club at the school, and this year the 1st graders were my guinea pigs. I’m lucky our school has a 1st grade teacher who is open to new ideas and loves to incorporate learning in different ways. She’s also been a huge supporter of my read alouds. In fact, one day I couldn’t read to the 4th grade, so she did it for me. She had such a fun time, she’s been doing it ever since. Bonus: she’s good to Nico and has helped him harness some of that exuberance and channel it into tasks like keeping his area from becoming a fire hazard.
I’ve been hosting informal movie adaptation clubs since Mikey learned to read. As I’ve mentioned in the past, the house rule is that you have to read the book before you are allowed to watch the movie. I’ve mentioned this rule to the kids at school, and at first they looked at me with abject horror. “Be glad you’re not my kids,” I chirped. No book, no movie. The older kids, especially after seeing Divergent, are more willing to explore multiple treatments of their favorite story. Most of them prefer the book, too.
I decided to use James and the Giant Peach as my first classroom movie adaptation. I took this suggestion straight from the best book ever on read alouds, Jim Trelease’s Read Aloud Handbook. Starting in April, I made weekly visits to the 1st grade and read aloud to them for 30 minutes. I finished the book a couple of weeks ago, but Nico’s teacher decided to make watching the movie part of the final week of school activities. Smart, especially when dealing with little ones.
Nico’s teacher provided the kids with juice and a small bag of chips for munching. You have never heard anything cuter than a room full of 7 year olds chomp-chomping on chips. I asked the kids to look for differences between the book and the movie. As they called out differences, I wrote them down on the white board. I didn’t write down every difference they noted, but I think we ended with 23 differences. One little boy counted all the ones I didn’t write down and told me the final count was 49 differences between the book and the movie. Lesson learned: never underestimate a child’s ability to pay attention. There were days I read to them where I felt they weren’t listening. I was wrong.
Because the book has a few bad words that I had to change on the fly as I read (ass, idiot, etc.), I prescreened the movie at home. I attribute the use of the word ‘ass’ to the book’s 1961 publication date. Wasn’t ass still a word for a donkey back then? The movie had some questionable language (stupid, shut up, idiot, and ass once), and each time they came up the kids all cried out “SHE SAID THE ‘S’ WORD!” or “DID YOU HEAR HIM SAY THE ‘SH’ WORD?!” It was a good opportunity to talk about acting respectfully towards your friends, even when you’re feeling frustrated. I remembered when the word ‘ass’ occurred and made sure to loudly ask a question. The word went by unnoticed.
These are first graders, so it’s not like we had a philosophical discussion comparing and contrasting media forms and how they allow one to explore the themes central to the story. Their teacher asked them to draw and color a picture about the movie, and I suggested they draw a scene from the movie that was different from the book.
I asked them whether they liked the book or the movie better. Most of them liked the movie better, which I understand at this age.
This project was super fun. The kids loved it, and even though we didn’t really do much more than color pictures and eat chips, I still say (in my utterly uneducated and inexperienced opinion) they used critical thinking skills, made connections, and did a little compare/contrast work. Again, that’s my uneducated opinion.
The best part of the Movie Adaptation Club–the very best, best part–was when the movie ended and the movie suggestions popped up. Goosebumps was one of the movies and immediately the boys started yelling and screaming. “Can we watch it, Mrs. Kendall? Can we? Please? Can we watch Goosebumps?”
And then, one little boy to the other, “We can’t! We have to read the book first. That’s the rule.”
“OK. Mrs. Kendall, will you read Goosebumps to us next year in 2nd grade?”
Awesome idea! Of course they used critical thinking skills. I know your school is likely not teaching to the new common core standards, but thought I’d throw this 4th grade one your way:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.7
Make connections between the text of a story or drama and a visual or oral presentation of the text, identifying where each version reflects specific descriptions and directions in the text.
Learning wrapped up in fun is still learning. In fact, I’d argue that wrapping an activity in fun is more likely to make it a learning activity.
No, we’re not teaching to the standards yet, but we’ve had curriculum committee meetings to see how to incorporate them. I’m not a fan of some of the requirements, especially the “more non-fiction” one. If you read the standards, the goal is to prepare them for college, but I don’t see how some of these requirements will achieve that goal. To the best of my knowledge, the best way to prepare for college is to inspire intellectual curiosity in children.
I am a huge fan of the emphasis on informational text. The increase in that kind of text increases as kids move up through the grades. A misconception at the secondary level is that it means English teachers won’t be teaching as much literature (fiction, poetry, drama). That’s not the case. What it really means is that students will be doing more reading across the curriculum. Literacy standards are now part of social studies, science, and technical subjects, which wasn’t the case previously. I am seeing a huge shift starting, in which teachers in those other subjects are taking literacy seriously in a way that they haven’t before. They’re not just assigning kids to read/write, they are actually teaching them how to do it in their subject areas. (And those skills look different in different academic disciplines.) To prepare kids for college/life I think we need to foster intellectual curiosity and provide a deep, solid foundation in knowledge and skills. The part of me that remains eternally optimistic thinks it is possible to do both.
That is very encouraging. I hope that emphasis on literacy across the board trickles down to the primary level, though I don’t see how as the kids are just now getting comfortable with reading. I know (very little) from reading on education the past few months that even the brightest kids struggle in math and science when it is a question of analytical thinking/reading comprehension, like with word problems. Word problems, especially multiple choice, are almost all about reading comprehension. In law school, while prepping for the bar, I consistently tested high in word problems, even though that is the area in which most graduates do poorly. It wasn’t that I knew the law. I didn’t know any more than anyone else. It’s that I knew little things, like the word “shall” means always without exception, or that “liable” always refers to a civil matter. In many of the testing questions students take–at all levels–the answers are there for the picking (or you can at least eliminate 2 answers). You have to know how to read it/find the clues. In conclusion of this geek diatribe, I think word problems are fun. They’re like puzzles or riddles.
I taught math in NYC and that was the hardest part–teaching kids how to apply their math skills to these poorly worded math word problems. A lot of them were learning english as a second language, hadn’t been exposed to word problems but then had their math “level” determined by the tests. Too often, the problems were poorly worded so it wasn’t even a matter of reading comprehension, but “poorly written problems” comprehension!
Years ago the district I was in noticed that there was a significant correlation between students’ scores on reading assessments and science assessments, and we knew that the science scores said more about students’ skills in reading than about their knowledge of science. A big part of my job as an instructional coach is supporting teachers in learning how to teach students about literacy practices within their academic disciplines. From working with them, I have such a greater understanding of how reading works differently in math than it does in language arts–or science or social studies. In the CCSS, that difference shows starting with 6th grade. (So, for example, although all content areas in 7th grade are working on determining the meaning of words/phrases, in language arts the focus is on figurative and connotative language and how that impacts meaning/tone, in social studies the focus is on vocabulary specific to history/social studies and in science it is on symbols, key terms, and domain-specific words.) It was so eye-opening to me to realize that my way of approaching a text is completely different from the way math teachers typically do–and that those differences had a lot to do with why I struggled in math. As I’ve told them often, they really don’t want someone like me teaching their kids how to read math! We’re definitely in the beginning stages, but I think this is going to be really good for kids in the long run. Sorry to be so long-winded and wonky–just think this stuff is so important. :-)
Never underestimate their power to pay attention. I still read aloud with my daughter at bedtime and sometimes it seems as if she is rolling around, fidgeting and yet, when I ask her something book related, she’s all over it. Love this idea of doing a book to movie ‘club’. I made her read the Ramona books (not all, but we read a few) before we saw the Ramona movie a couple of summers ago and same thing with the Judy Moody movie. I think it helped her appreciate the movies in a new way if nothing else. Happy Wednesday!
Same here. I don’t read aloud as much as I should, but that’s mainly because I’m horrible at time management. :-/ When I do, I find it’s the same scenario. You think they don’t care/listen, but they really do.
Have I told you lately how much I enjoy your blog? Thanks for sharing. You bring sunshine into my life.
How nice of you to say! Thank you. :)
Matilda would be a great idea for this. The book/movie differences are very superficial and obvious but the theme stays true. I, of course, prefer the book but the movie is one of the best book adaptations I’ve seen for a children’s book (Worst? The Tale of Despereaux…ugh).
How funny! Just the other day I was researching good movie adaptations, and The Tale of Despereaux was on a list of “worst” adaptions!
Also, good to know about Matilda. We even have that book in the library, and the 2nd grade girls seemed to all like the movie. But, because they’ve seen the movie, a lot of them didn’t want to read the book! I’ll have to head them off at the pass next year in 2nd grade. :)
Well done! Hurrah for the magic of books! (I make my 3 read a full (chapter) book for every 1/2 hour of minecraft time … bwaaahaahaaa. :)
Oh, that’s a good one!
We are just heading into a teacher’s strike, and have been on rotating strike days for the last few weeks, it seems that the school year might be done already, and I for one am feeling totally unprepared. Your movie adaptation club might be just the thing for our summer. We had signed-up for a reading summer camp, but it will likely be cancelled, I’m worried for my youngest, as reading is not coming as easily for him as it did for his sister. It is always good to have a little motivation in there, hopefully he’ll be totally up to speed before the end of summer.
For the last few weeks I’ve been reading The Secret Garden to my little guy, and I wasn’t really sure that he was paying attention or liking it. Then last night, I was interrupted by a phone call during our reading time, and when I came back into the room, five minutes later, I closed the book and said it was time for bed. O piped-up and said, “But what about the 10,000?”…it seemed he was paying more attention than me, and in fact, I had stopped in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a paragraph. I finished the sentence, ‘Ten thousand new green points pushing through the mould’, O sighed, and let me know that he could go to sleep now that he knew the end of the sentence.
I don’t know if the movie will be any good, but we’re about half way there.
This is how I felt when I was reading The Chronicles of Narnia to the boys. The kids at school inspired me to try again. Mikey was into it–he loves being read to–but Nico wasn’t as invested, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. Now I know better.
Ah, your story about previewing it before hand reminds me of my first year teaching. We had just finished up a (long) botany section and we were going to have a “party” in which every food item had to be a part of a plant (root, stem, seed, flower, etc.). I found a great Eyewitness video on plants and of course watched it at home first. It was captivating, good music, and full of interesting information so that I knew my kids would learn something as well as be entertained. Unfortunately, there was 5-7 seconds of female waist-high nudity at the beginning. No way could I show that (First year teaching at a private Christian school? To sixth graders? Yeah right.) I figured out that if I stopped the video (VCR tape) then just restarted it, exactly that much video wouldn’t show. I made it seem like an accident that I bumped it, immediately restarted it, and no one was the wiser. Your asking a loud question reminded me of this, great minds think alike, ha!
Goosebumps! Your favorite! Do I remember a less than favorable review of those books? I feel the same way…
I did this with my school age summer program last year!
We read How to Eat Fried Worms, The Indian in the Cupboard, Ella Enchanted, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
We had a blast and the kids really enjoyed seeing the books come to life.
Loved this post and love the work that you do with the little ones!