After their first viewing, I asked them to share what they noticed about the film.
The first time was simply to enjoy the story. For this lesson, my students watched the film twice. I then share common themes found in stories, such as, perseverance, family, friendship, hope, honesty, self determination, courage, etc. I describe theme as the heart of the story. One of my absolute favorite lessons to teach is "theme." Last year, my fifth graders were having trouble grasping the concept, so I searched for a good short film to visually "show" them theme, and I found the perfect one!
![pixar short films pixar short films](https://www.dvdizzy.com/images/m-p/pixarshorts-05.jpg)
Learning what the skill looks like visually, and practicing with a media kids are already familiar with, is an effective first step in students applying the skill to their reading. Just about ANY reading skill can be taught with shorts: making connections, asking questions, sequencing, predictions, drawing conclusions, plot, character development, theme, and this list goes on and on! Which reading skills can be taught using shorts? You don't want any unexpected surprises! Also, sometimes there is an advertisement to get through at the beginning, so I always set it up beforehand, that way it's all ready to go for the lesson. Be careful to always view films before showing them in class. My go to place to find great shorts is YouTube. My students, regardless of their level of language proficiency, "get" the lesson more easily because the shorts are visual. Most shorts do not have dialogue, they're all action. It's fairly easy to infer that the larger bird is being bullied and the small birds don't like him because he's different.Show a short film and students are engaged! Visual learners and students who typically struggle with reading comprehension, including English language learners (ELLs), have greater success practicing comprehension skills with shorts. We start with For the Birds, which students have usually seen at least once. Here are the links to the videos that I use, in the order that I use them. It's really a rather awesome discussion and by the end of the week, they ARE actually filling out the chart in order. I don't change the order of the chart, because it's important for them to recognize that the process actually happens in the order that the chart is in, and so we talk a lot about how this is helping them to understand the process of their thoughts as they make decisions about the text that they are reading. I found this discouraging at first, but then I realized that if they had the inference, then it would be my job to get them to think about their thinking, asking them to think about what they saw and what they knew that allowed them to infer at all. In all actuality, they were more quick to make the inference.
![pixar short films pixar short films](https://mickeyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Float.jpg)
Now, I will say that these are a great tool, but when I first started to use these I had an unrealistic expectation…I thought that students would make their inferences in order from the start.
![pixar short films pixar short films](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u7rf9Hg4ukU/Uzx4AO33wKI/AAAAAAAAALY/fLiB2xGOw0g/s1600/pixar_short_films-wide.jpg)
Students are given an inference chart and asked to record what they see, what they know, and what they infer. I like to kickstart each day during that first week with a different short film to get our inferences flowing. Want to start a great class discussion and get students buzzing with inferences? Use short films to get those inferences flowing!ĭuring my first week out of three (and to infinity and beyond) that I focus on teaching students to infer, I try to incorporate many different ways to think about how we make an inference when reading.