Written by an award-winning classroom teacher with years of experience integrating moviemaking into curriculum, this book offers quick-start lesson plans for any content area and grade level, helping students amplify their voices and effect change through moviemaking. Our world hinges on storytelling and the ways in which stories can be told are always evolving. For students to become future-ready, confident creators of original content, they need opportunities to share their stories. Moviemaking helps students showcase their learning, process their lives and connect with others in a meaningful way. Moviemaking in the Classroom breaks down the process of digital storytelling to help teachers plan efficient and effective instructional sequences. The book provides guidance on how to purposefully build visual and audio literacy skills to improve student work and increase student efficacy in the creative process. Also included are practical suggestions for removing barriers from the storytelling process, such as how to provide more opportunities for students to tell their stories during a single academic year. This book: • Shows teachers how to create efficient and effective lesson sequences with digital storytelling in mind, particularly in a blended learning environment. • Supports teachers who are new to digital storytelling by showing the impact and importance of providing students with multiple opportunities to tell their stories. • Offers project ideas for teachers already implementing digital storytelling in their classes and shows how to streamline workflow and improve their professional practice. • Supports distance and remote learning through a full chapter on strategies for applying these practices to a distance learning environment. • Fosters diversity, inclusion and student empowerment by showcasing student examples on topics including racism, death and illness, immigration, gun violence and pollution. This book provides insight, inspiration and practical ideas to empower teachers of all content areas to implement moviemaking projects with their students using best practices.

Teaching Difficult History through Film explores the potential of film to engage young people in controversial or contested histories and how they are represented, ranging from gender and sexuality, to colonialism and slavery. Adding to the education literature of how to teach and learn difficult histories, contributors apply their theoretical and pedagogical expertise and experiences to a variety of historical topics to show the ways that film can create opportunities for challenging conversations in the classroom and attempts to recognize the perspectives of historically marginalized groups. Chapters focus on translating research into practice by applying theoretical frameworks such as critical race theory, auto-ethnography or cultural studies, as well as more practical pedagogical models with film. Each chapter also includes applicable pedagogical considerations, such as how to help students approach difficult topics, model questions or strategies for engaging students, and examples from the authors’ own experiences in teaching with film or in leading students to develop counter-narratives through filmmaking. These discussions of the real considerations facing classroom teachers and professors are sure to appeal to experienced secondary teachers, pre-service teacher education programs, graduate students, and academic audiences within education, history, and film studies. Part and chapter discussion guides, full references of the films included in the book, and resources for teachers are available on the book’s companion website www.teachingdifficulthistory.com.

Offers a fresh overview of teaching with film to effectively enhance social studies instruction.

Max is used to being called Stupid. And he is used to everyone being scared of him. On account of his size and looking like his dad. Kevin is used to being called Dwarf. And he is used to everyone laughing at him. On account of his size and being some cripple kid. But greatness comes in all sizes, and together Max and Kevin become Freak The Mighty and walk high above the world. An inspiring, heartbreaking, multi-award winning international bestseller.

Developing Natural Curiosity through Project-Based Learning is a practical guide that provides step-by-step instructions for PreK–3 teachers interested in embedding project-based learning (PBL) into their daily classroom routine. The book spells out the five steps teachers can use to create authentic PBL challenges for their learners and illustrates exactly what that looks like in an early childhood classroom. Authentic project-based learning experiences engage children in the mastery of twenty-first-century skills and state standards to empower them as learners, making an understanding of PBL vital for PreK–3 teachers everywhere.

Action! Film is a common and powerful element in the social studies classroom and Cinematic Social Studies explores teaching and learning social studies with film. Teaching with film is a prominent teaching strategy utilized by many teachers on a regular basis. Cinematic Social Studies moves readers beyond the traditional perceptions of teaching film and explores the vast array of ideas and strategies related to teaching social studies with film. The contributing authors of this volume seek to explain, through an array of ideas and visions, what cinematic social studies can/should look like, while providing research and rationales for why teaching social studies with film is valuable and important. This volume includes twenty-four scholarly chapters discussing relevant topics of importance to cinematic social studies. The twenty four chapters are divided into three sections. This stellar collection of writings includes contributions from noteworthy scholars like Keith Barton, Wayne Journell, James Damico, Cynthia Tyson, and many more.

In a culture increasingly focused on visual media, students have learned not only to embrace multimedia presentations in the classroom, but to expect them. Such expectations are perhaps more prevalent in a field as dynamic and cross-disciplinary as religious studies, but the practice nevertheless poses some difficult educational issues -- the use of movies in academic coursework has far outpaced the scholarship on teaching religion and film. What does it mean to utilize film in religious studies, and what are the best ways to do it? In Teaching Religion and Film, an interdisciplinary team of scholars thinks about the theoretical and pedagogical concerns involved with the intersection of film and religion in the classroom. They examine the use of film to teach specific religious traditions, religious theories, and perspectives on fundamental human values. Some instructors already teach some version of a film-and-religion course, and many have integrated film as an ancillary to achieving central course goals. This collection of essays helps them understand the field better and draws the sharp distinction between merely "watching movies" in the classroom and comprehending film in an informed and critical way.