Embedded Files
This week our 8th graders traveled to Gettysburg for a field trip, so I wanted to build upon the interest that my colleague Dave Raymond @mountnbiker73 instilled in them and examine the Civil War from an ELA lens. I wanted students to connect their field trip experience and content knowledge to make conceptual sense of historical fiction and specific details. Knowing it is the end of the year and students’ stamina is limited, I decided a short, but creative assignment was the way to go. How? Combining historical fiction and digital storytelling.
We first examined the elements of historical fiction by viewing movie trailers and discussing what was fact and fiction in the plot lines. Then students were given sentence stems to help them with a ten minute free write with the goal of showing the setting of The Civil War by creating their own character. Lastly, as a class, we explored the capabilities of WeVideo as a digital storytelling tool—using fonts, colors, and sounds to enhance our writing. Students were focused and engaged until the end of class(presentation time) when we shared our writing/videos and clapped and cheered after each one.
Click HERE for the lesson and click HERE to check out Dave's history Youtube channel.
This project could be used/adapted for history teachers looking to embed ELA skills into their classes or ELA teachers looking to capitalize on lessons learned in history courses. In fact, my husband @ThomasMelhorn, a high school history teacher, has his students complete a more advanced version of this assignment. When I saw what his students were creating, I knew I had to adapt the lesson for middle school, and that's what this is.
Here are a few of my favorite student examples:
https://www.wevideo.com/view/2685125519
https://www.wevideo.com/view/2685177038
https://www.wevideo.com/view/2685045253
My colleague Deanna Grbich took this idea and made it better. After teaching The Diary of Anne Frank, she had her students take the point of view of any of the people who lived during WW11 and write from their perspective. In order to succeed on this assignment, students truly had to understand the setting and how it could shape a person--for better or worse.
Here is one of her WW11 videos:
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