Govt. Teacher

Posted on 6/24/09

Thanks Kev. That is what I do most of the time. Once, or at most
twice a year (once a semester) I show an entire movie that I know
they will learn from. All of my students are high school kids that
are in college, and I often show a movie during their college finals
week (which is a month earlier than their high school finals week) to
reduce the pressure of college finals & give them a break from the
traditional classroom activities, projects, group work, & didactic
learning.

I do use podcast clips, movie clips, "Daily Show" clips, clips of
late night comedians political jokes, and a lot of TV news clips (I
record the news every day & edit it to my needs) & documentary clips
to use as bellringers, topic introductions, and to stimulate class
discussion.

On 6/24/09, Kev wrote:
> I was going to suggest the very same thing. I think the key to any
> movie in history/government is to use only the parts that are
> relevant. By taking shorts clips you can cut the boredom and
> language issues leaving you with a nice, tight, to-the-point
> teaching tool.
>
> I think we need to better start thinking conceptually as opposed
> to topically. What government concept specifically are you trying
> to illustrate? What movies or scenes might illustrate that?
> Instead of just looking for entire movies (which rarely works) try
> to break it down that way.
>
> There are, for example, plenty of satirical and sci-fi movies that
> do an interesting job of showing what an extreme government would
> look like. That might be a good jumping off point for discussion.

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