I made it! Just in time for Star Wars Day (May the Fourth Be With You!)
This year I added Star Wars Day to my class calendar, just for fun. Students started commenting about it and asking me questions. That's what led me to creating an article set about Star Wars Day. Since I work with students with a wide range of reading abilities, I made the article at three levels, like I did with my April Fools' Day articles. Honestly I'm really enjoying making those and have more in the works!
But I digress. Back to Star Wars. I realized my students have their state reading test the same week as Star Wars Day, so I decided we would watch a Star Wars movie together. It would give them a mental break, foster community by sharing my interests, and I know how well movies can work with struggling readers.
I gave a look for movie guides on Teachers Pay Teachers, but I really wasn't impressed with what I found. Most of them just asked basic, literal questions which are really more about forcing students to pay attention, rather than engaging them.
That's how I found myself a week ago sitting on the couch with a notebook in hand, writing down timestamps and coming up with inferential questions that would relate to our unit on elements of literature. I swear I really did intend to just buy a guide to, y'know, save myself some work. So much for that.
Now, once I had a good collection of questions, I thought I might have something worth sharing with other teachers on TPT. I adjusted and refined the content, created (what I think is) an easy to read and visually pleasing layout, and added before and after viewing questions to round it out.
Ya'll, I am unreasonably proud of the look of these pages ^_^()
And then, because I can never just keep things simple, I said so myself "Hey, I bet I could differentiate movie guides to."
Many focused afternoons and late nights (shout out to my poor boyfriend Ki who encouraged me while I was neglecting him), and I am happy to say that I have done it.
The final PDF ended up being a whopping 55 pages long!
I am so proud of myself for sticking with this and not dropping it half way like I usually do (thanks ADHD). And I'm also proud of what I made. It includes three complete sets of guided questions (pre-, during-, and post-viewing) at three different difficulty levels, while still providing rigor and tackling core literacy skills. Rather than writing the same questions three ways for the during viewing questions, I wrote them at two complexity levels, and then added multiple choice options to the lower level to support students who need added supports like ELL students or those with more significant disabilities. I think that works out much better and will allow those students to still be successful.
If you have any interest, I'd love it if you'd check it out over on Teachers Pay Teachers. This is the first movie guide I've ever made and I'm open to any kind of feedback. There' not enough out there for secondary students that need this level of accommodation or modification, so I want to make sure anything I put out there is good quality and of value to teachers and students.
