Summer Rerun: Books Into Movies!

Summer Rerun: Books Into Movies!

We just moved, all our stuff is in boxes, and I don't have two brain cells to rub together. So in the spirit of summer, I offer you a rerun of a post I wrote on my other blog, back in May 2007:

It's a good time of year to do some low-key, easy lesson plans. One of my favorites for 4th and 5th grade is "Books into Movies."

First, I pull a whole bunch of books that have been made into movies and put them out on the tables (Wikipedia has a pretty good list). When the class comes in, they have to look at the books on the tables and guess what they have in common. Some years they guess and guess and never come up with the answer ("Animals!" "No, they're all fantasy!" "No, they're all classics!"), but this year someone guessed it almost right away in both 4th grade classes.

Then we talk for a while about the differences between books and movies: Have they ever had the experience of reading a book and then seeing the movie, and wondering how the two can even have the same title? What are some reasons that a movie might have to be different from a book? Why might the people making the movie decide to change things around?

This year I talked about my experience seeing the movie "Harriet the Spy" after loving the book as a kid, especially my disappointment that Harriet was so skinny and cute (I showed them the illustrations from the book as a comparison) and that the movie wasn't set in New York. I also gave them some of the scoop about the upcoming Inkheart movie.

They did some silent reading, choosing a book from one of the tables (I encouraged, but didn't require, that they pick a book they'd never read but whose movie adaptation they'd seen), and then after checkout we read Shrek, which is a great example of a book that's completely different from the movie. I thought they might think it was too young for them, but both classes were highly amused by Shrek's evil temper and by the poetry.

When asked about books and movies in class, kids will dutifully reply "The book is always better": they've learned that books are supposed to be Good for Them and movies are faintly unwholesome fun. Sometimes teachers even act like the existence of a movie taints the book, and won't let kids read books for reports if they've already seen the movie.

Kids believe this, too; I don't know how many times I've suggested a book to a kid, only to have them shrug it away with "Oh, I already saw the movie of that." This class shakes that up a little and asks them to think about the two mediums in a different way. Plus, it's just a blast to teach.

July 31, 2008

Comments

[Lise]

The Mid-Continent Public Library has created "Based on the Book," a list of "over 1,250 books, novels, short stories, and plays that have been made into motion pictures. Utilizing the Internet Movie Database as the authority, all movies in this collection have been released as feature-length films in the United States, in English, since 1980." It's mostly adult movies, but also includes the major feature films based on kids' books.

It's browseable by movie title, book title, and year of movie release. And it includes Inkheart, which the Wikipedia list doesn't (yet).

See http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/movies/

[8r!#@ny]

That is so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It really works =D =D

[Cherry Africa]

I think it is really great to give children the opportunity to compare print with movies. It makes them think about their own learning preferences and wonderfully in most cases, they would choose books!

Great job!

Cherry Africa
www.geniuschilddevelopment.com