Documentaries Inspire Social Responsibility, and Literacy in Kids!

This past term we conducted a documentary class with a groupof 5^th and 6^th graders.  The students were required to come up with a film about atopic that was pertinent to them. One team choose NYC’s Cycle Wars, another team choose how to combat pollutionin NYC, and the final group decided to tackle how to keep drugs out of thehands of minors.

The school gave us 2- 3 hours a week (mostly after-school)to work with the teams on their movies. The students were required to research their films, seek out and call opinionatedpeople to interview, create a story, seek archival video and photos from theweb, as well as learn how to edit on Final Cut in our brand new state of theart Mac Lab.  Very exciting stuff!

The films stretched the students to think critically about aproblem, collect information on both sides, and determine for themselves whattheir personal focus and message was to a viewing audience.

The new illiteracies they are learning are fantastic towatch develop.  Their criticalthinking and argumentative skills have sharpened, as well as their ability totease out a story from a mesh of interviews.  I love seeing their enthusiasm as they share their ideas andget their message out - truly inspiring!

The next challenge they will embark on will be in socialmedia and marketing.  Once theirfilms are complete we will post them and see how many hits they get.  The team to get the most hits by theend of the year will win “prize of immeasurable value”.  Stay tuned!