Teacher Talk Tuesday: We Are Marshall

After missing last week, I am back with a brand new Teacher Talk Tuesday! Sorry for the wait!

  

For those of you who don't know, I am a high school Special Education teacher. Working with kids who have needs in English has made me rethink what I need to do to help them learn the concepts we need them to. Last semester, something I tried was this "We Are Marshall" unit. I have a class of six BOYS that need something a little out of the box to keep them all focused, so sports was the direction I went. I, myself, am a sucker for inspirational sports movies, and with this one being based on a true story I saw ways to connect other sources to it.

We started out by watching the movie We Are Marshall (staring Matthew McConaughey). I was pleased to see the guys enjoy the movie/storyline. Some of them didn't know this actually happened, and were really taken aback when they found out. It took us a few days to watch the entire movie with classes being shorter some days, etc.

After we watched the movie, I brought in newspaper articles about and pictures of the crash. I let the boys read through these and look at the pictures, really seeing what truly happened. They didn't find this AS exciting as the movie, but they were still interested!

The next thing I did was buy a documentary off of Amazon for a couple bucks called Return of the Thundering Herd. This was the true story of the Marshall University plane crash, including interviews with coaches, players, people from the community, etc. This really drew the kids back in because they started noticing some of the liberties that were taken when the movie was made. There were differences in the movie from what actually happened, and some of them were really upset that they wouldn't accurately represent the tragedy. We had some great conversations.

At the end of taking in all of these different media sources regarding the same thing, I had them create a three-way Venn Diagram comparing/contrasting the movie, the documentary, and articles/pictures they were provided. This allowed them to really pin point what was the truth and what may have been embellished or exaggerated. Once they had created the diagram, I had them write me a response to the unit. Did they like it? Did they see why we did it? How did they feel about using the articles and pictures? Were they upset that the movie "changed" history? I got some really great responses from them, so I was very happy with how things turned out with this unit.

I will say, I did NOT have the boys take notes while they were watching the movie and/or the documentary. For them, it is hard to watch, process, and scribe information without missing a lot of other things. Instead, we discussed what we had watched the day before each time they came into class for a new day. This helped them communicate their ideas, talk about what they saw, etc.


I know that some teachers are very AGAINST showing movies in class, but what do you think? Can we utilize movies if we tie it in with non-fiction resources? How do you address this in your classroom?