Teaching English through Film and Screenwriting…

I am honored to be able to cross-post Stephen Wilmarth’s blog post below on Langwitches.
If you are interested to read more about Steve’s International Experimental program at the Number One Middle School in Wuhan, China take a look at:

• Take a Peek into China’s First 1:1 iPad Class
• Learning…Young Chinese Perspective
• Bringing a 1:1 iPad Program to China

by Stephen Wilmarth
China has a problem.  It will soon become, if it isn’t already, the largest English speaking country in the world.

This is the result of English being a mandatory subject for every student who graduates from high school and goes on to a university.  The Chinese national college entrance exam, known as the GaoKao, consists of nearly 25% English language related questions, including English grammar, English vocabulary, English sentence structure, and English reading passages.  And the GaoKao is the only criteria used to select students for China’s most prestigious universities.  So, every public high school in China is focused on teaching students English as a second language.  It is a national priority and a national obsession.  In this heated environment, the teaching of language takes center stage.  Questions abound.  Is the teaching of English being effectively accomplished in China?  Why are so many English learners, who score well in English sections on all-or-nothing tests like the GaoKao, unable to “function” in English?  Can an emphasis on the “test” really be a successful strategy for learning a second language that is as different from the Chinese native tongue as English and Mandarin are?

The evidence that the conflict between the “test” and the “need” is not very promising for the current system of teaching methods.  But closing the gap between the need for Chinese students to score high on the GaoKao, while achieving better results in using English in professional and daily transactions with foreigners, does not have an easy or clear answer.

In my own boot-strapping attempt to improve the teaching of English for my students at the International Experimental Class, I’ve made a choice to try and give students a much wider range of active learning options.  I can do this because I’m not bound by the system to prepare my students for higher education in a Chinese institutions.  My students are all focused on going to a university abroad, predominantly to the US.

I offer the following project as an example of one of the kinds of methods that we’re trying.  Observe these artifacts and make your own judgement.  Give me your feedback.  I’m interested in improving the outcome and the methods for achieving better results in language learning.

The Project Description:

A class of 45 students at my school in China were matched up with a class of 20 students at the All Saints Catholic Girls College (high school) in Liverpool (Sydney), Australia.

Each class broke up into teams to make a total of 6 short movies per class – 6 movies made by our Chinese students, and 6 movies produced by the Australian students.  These movies were storyboarded, scripted, filmed, directed, and produced strictly by the students.

The final versions were then stripped of soundtracks – music, dialogue, and sound effects, and the silent versions were exchanged between the schools.  The students were then asked to put their own soundtracks – music, dialogue, and sound effects, into the exchanged silent films.

The culmination of the project is to share both the original versions with sound and the updated versions with sound from the other class.  Students are then asked to analyze the films for cultural, language, and creative differences.

I’ll offer some examples of the work here.  I’m interested in finding “evidence” of learning.  How does making a movie, including storyboarding, scripting, filming, directing, and producing help to improve language and communication skills?  Is there evidence here that language teaching objectives are being met?

This is a clip produced by students at the No. 1 High School Affiliated with Central China Normal University.  The clip is titled “Hide & Seek.”  This first sample is a complete production with sound.

This next version is the same clip, but stripped of all sound, which was passed along to the students in Australia.  It’s now their job to create their own sound track for this video clip.

Here’s one of the versions returned by the students from Australia, with their own “script.”  This is titled “Hide & Seek” by Jennifer, Shalona and Ashmita.

This next clip, titled “Recurring,” turned out to be of great interest to the students in Australia.  It’s dark overtones and desire to “turn back the clock” in order to get a second chance, seems to be a strong theme among students.

Here’s the original version with sound.

Here’s the stripped version without sound.

And here’s one of the versions, titled “Recurring” by Cindy, that were returned by the Australian students, with their own sound track.

Here’s another clip produced by students at the No. 1 High School Affiliated with Central China Normal University.  The clip is titled “Friendship.”

Again, this “theme” seems to run strong in students in every culture.

Finally, here are the remaining clips, with sound tracks, produced by the students at the No. 1 High School Affiliated with Central China Normal University.

“IMAGINE FLYING” by Aqua Group

“Angel Beats” by Grape Group

“A Story About a Dog” by Lime Group

In all cases, I think this project demonstrates to me, at least, that there are common themes that interest teenagers everywhere.  I also think this work shows the strong influences of global “macro” cultures.
I’d be interested in feedback on this project.  This is but one of many projects we’ve run this year, using multi-media channels to help students build a better working knowledge in foreign language and use their creative energies to express complex ideas and feelings.

1st Graders Create Their Own Read-Along Audiobook

Last year, while our first grade teacher was absent for an extended period of time, I spend a few sessions with them to read a book from the Magic Tree House series, Vacation under the Volcano, and then pulled  students out in small groups to record them. You can read about the process and my reflection on this post “Podcasting with First Grade“.

This year, the first grade teacher took over reading and writing the script in the classroom. She was one step ahead of me in reading and scripting each chapter, as I took three students (Interviewer’s, Jack’s & Annie’s voice) at the time out of the classroom to record them.

Recording the Script

As I was pulling the students out to record, the classroom teacher continued reading, chapter by chapter, and creating the interview script to be recorded with the students. By the time the last chapter was recorded, I had ten written scripts collected. I decided to create a little booklet (created from a MS Word Template) for the first graders, so they would be able to follow along as they were listening to the podcast.

Booklet created with MS Word Template

The audio file is about 15 minutes long. As the class listened to the podcast for the first time in it’s entirety, they had their little fingers on the paper to follow along. Each chapter ending was followed with a special sound to indicate that a new chapter was about to start. This helped any student who had lost their place on the script.

Read-Along

Read- Along

Once we had finished listening to the podcast, I asked their teacher give them a few minutes to write down a couple of sentences about their experience.

My thoughts:

• It amazes me every time. Students are so engaged, wanting to re-record, if their voice, didn’t sound “just” right.
• Students (6-7 year olds)  are very interested in the mechanics of Garageband (ex. tracks, dead air, sound clips, moving clips, etc).
• Students started to experiment with their voices: inflection, fluency, pitches, emotions, volume, speed…
• The written script as an add-on to the audio file was a bonus. Students are eager to “read-along” as they were listening to their podcast. I want to look for an iPad/iPhone app to streamline the process. Does anyone know of an app that would allow me to import a recorded mp3 file (I want to be able to continue using Garagband to record and edit them) and then ” attach” the word doc or a pdf file to that audio file for kids to scroll through at their own pace, as they are playing and pausing the audio file.

Next Step:

• upload the podcast to their classroom website to be played within the blog.
• upload the podcast to our school’s iTunes Podcast channel.
• Send information (how-to-guide) via blog, email or paper print-out to parents to help them subscribe and download podcast episode from iTunes to their devices.
• Work with librarian to establish a book review, storytelling, etc. audio file library accessible in physical and virtual library space to all students.

Reflection:

• I really like to expand the reflection piece as part of the podcasting process.
• In the future I want to involve students by giving them ownership and time to “play” on their own in Garageband to record and edit their voices.
• Assessment: I need to find a way to formally assess the impact podcasting (including script writing and voice recording) has on writing, reading, fluency, comprehension and presentation skills.
• We need to do this earlier in the year to be able to connect our students with other podcasting children around the world. Take a look at my blog post from last year when I asked: A Worldwide Audience for Six Year Olds?

Listen to these first graders make “Dinosaurs Before Dark” come alive with their voices.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you have a first grade class or your own child is ready and interested in reading chapter books, download the mp3 file and the pdf file of the script, upload them to your iPod, iTouch, iPhone or iPad (or other device). Now you should be able to listen to the audio as you read along.

Dinosaurs Before Dark Script

——

Postscript: I could not stop thinking about the script and the audio file. Thanks to Leigh Murrell on Twitter, I checked into epub, a format that can be imported into iBooks on my iPad/iPhone.

Since I don’t have Pages on my macbook, I used a script file I had created in Word.

Creating Document in Word

I then converted the .docx file to an .epub file by using 2EPUB, a free online converter.

Free ePub converter

Once converted, I plugged my iPad in and dropped the .epub file from my finder directly into the iTunes>Books folder. I then added an artwork as a cover. Once I synched my iPad, I could find the dinosaur “booklet” on my bookshelf.

Import into iBooks

Even the dictionary part works, as you hold one finger down on a word, the dictionary caption pops up with a definition.

Script opened in iBook

I also uploaded the mp3 file to iTunes and now have a Read-Along audio book with the iBook and iPod combination.

A Timeline: Tool Set – Skill Set – Mind Set

In my previous post titled Enhancement-Automating-Transforming-Informating, I described the fusion (in my mind) of the SAMR model with Alan November’s concept of Automating vs. Informating to transform teaching and learning.

Since then, my colleague Andrea Hernandez and I have set down to create a visual using the above model to include concrete examples from our school to illustrate to our teachers what tasks are considered in the substitution/augmentation/modification/redefinition stages. We want to be transparent in showing our expectations of basic tasks being led autonomously by the classroom teachers to teach and support students without the necessity of tech support to be present. At the same time, we wanted to emphasize the progression and show what transformational teaching and learning looks like.

As we were populating the chart, it became clear to me that the stages were part of a time line, a process that an individual and an entire school cultures had to go through in order to transform and leap from “preparing students for 1970s, 1980′s 1990′s to preparing them for 2020′s and beyond” (Heidi Hayes Jacobs). Once I saw the imaginary time line, I also felt that that the stages coincided with how (21st century) teaching and learning was seen. We used to see it as a:

Tools Set:

• we taught keyboarding classes
• we had classes that taught a specific version of a office program (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• we emphasized file management
• we supported teachers when they did not know which button to click for printing
• we gave instructions, such as “click in the upper left corner for the drop down menu and save”, we gave new instructions when the software package, platform or version changed
• we gave tech support to upload, download and resize images

Then we started to understand that it was never about the tools, but about the skills teachers and students would acquire when using these tools.

Skill Set:

• we blog to teach and learn about writing, communication, networking, presentation, publishing, commenting, reflection, organization and collaboration skills. Blogging is about Digital Citizenship, Media Literacy, Information Literacy and Global Awareness.
• we use wikis to understand about copyright, evaluation and analysis of Information, collective knowledge and new writing genres.
• we skype in order to expose and connect teachers and students locally and globally to peers, experts, eye witnesses. We become more fluent in networking and and information literacies, speaking, listening and presentation skills are honed.
• we teach bookmarking skills to help teachers and students cope with the exponentially increasing information available. Finding, evaluating, analyzing, tagging, categorizing, organizing, connecting and remixing of information are just some of the skills necessary for that
• we podcast (audio and video)  to allow students to express themselves and their knowledge in more than the written form. We incorporate storytelling in order to give students multimedia skills as well as expose them to visual literacy and information literacy.

Now, it seems that teaching and learning will not necessarily move from the “enhancement” to the “transformation” stage with a tool set and the necessary skills alone. In order for teaching and learning to become transformative there also needs to be a

Mind Set:

• Our world has flattened and is interconnected
• Information is just going to continue to grow exponentially
• Students of today and tomorrow learn differently than we did
• We are life long learners
• We are self-directed learners
• “How we connect with each other is how learning occurs” (Stephen Wilmarth)
• “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but the ones who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn” (Alvin Toffler)
• “Collaboration and sharing knowledge are highly prized skills” (Alan November)

Take a look at the following graphic and keep a time line in mind, as well as the stages mentioned above to move from substitution to redefinition. Does this make sense to you? What would you add?