Short Free Video: Wouldn't it be a Better Assessment if We Used Video?

Golem

What if instead of responding to an out-of-context quotation, students were asked to use as a Critical Lens a short movie or video?  For example, watch The Monk and the Fish.  Then ask: What is that video all about?  The student's own answer to that question would become the Critical Lens for the essay.

Short videos and films, like short stories and poems, condense the message.  Higher order thinking is required to determine and concisely state the theme or message. There may be several choices, all correct.  Relating this to literary text(s) and to life would be much more interesting to the student => engagement in the assessment => perhaps more accurate results.

Here is a short list of short films that would work for this purpose.  Sorry - you need to look at them to decide their connections to your texts.  Preview them in the classroom or testing room so you can determine if you can access them on your network.

In the future?  Open access films will be part of ELA standardized testing.  You heard it 1st here.  But since the future is not yet here, these films, and others like them, add a new dimension to literature discussions.  Find more by search YouTube and other sources (YouTube is not the only source) for award-winning animation shorts. One excellent source is the Canadian Film Board (CFB), which contains animations of many folktales.

• The Monk and the Fish
• Drux Flux
• The Dot and the Line
• Harold and the Purple Crayon
• Hansel and Gretel - this the one I like - there are many others
• Golem
• An Artist
• The Cat Came Back
• Plot Device
• Science, Your Time Is Up - ask: What did you see?  will need multiple showing
• Frank the Wrabbit
• Every Child
• Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
• Freedom River
• Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life
• Yowie and the Magpie
• Alma
• The Giving Tree (avoid this in general - great for an modeling activity)
• The Legend of Bluesman Albert Johnson Animated - MS
• Walking - I like this because there are NO words
• Starless Night
• Oxygen - humorous science tie-in
• Bunny Animation
• Bully
• The Red Button
• Invasions
• Replay
• Even Pigeons Go to Heaven (subtitled)
• Artificial Paradise, Inc
• The Last Knit
• Bad Eggs
• Bird on a Wire 
• Human Nature
• Flyboy

Comment: This is a wonderful use of the individualization that iPads and tablets and smartphones should bring to education.  Not only learning, but also measurement of learning can be put into student hands.

I am indebted to Open Culture and to Design Your Way for providing films that gave me this idea.  Please suggest other movie shorts through Comment or email.