My students recently finished a novel study of the Newbery Medal award-winning Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Patterson. Today, the class watched the 2006 movie version of the book. Afterwards, we had a discussion about the similarities and differences between the book and the movie, which, of course (after moans and groans), resulted in a compare and contrast essay for the students.The interesting thing I learned from the discussion is that every student in my class liked the movie better than the book. I know they enjoyed reading the book immensely, as at the end of each section or chapter they wanted to continue the story (as in, "Please don't stop!"). Yet, they preferred visuals over text-laden pages. I realized that as a teacher I still haven't enabled my students to acknowledge the power of the written word. I haven't as yet encouraged them enough to ignite their own imaginations, to elicit the wonder of well-turned phrases, sentences, paragraphs and books. Because my students are over-saturated with visual and aural media, I wonder if I will ever be able to do so.
This also made me realize that I need to bring in more visual and aural media into my classroom teaching. Not lots, mind you, but enough to help my students make connections, broaden their schema and keep them interested in learning. I have to continue to develop varied styles of lesson plans that will build bridges of learning in my classroom.
1 comment:
Interesting. When I did A Midsummer Night's Dream with my grade 12 Eng. class this semester the consensus seemed to be that, while the movie helped them understand some plot and sequence, they all seemed to prefer reading it BECAUSE they got to image the characters and settings more. I was surprised though! It was not the response I was anticipating.
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