Assignment Author
Elspeth K. PalmerSoftware / Hardware
Multimedia console, DVD player
Context of Assignment
I did this assignment in Unit II on a day when my students were turning in a paper. Since I have 50-minute classes, we began this activity on a Monday and completed it on the following Wednesday.
Pedagogical Goals of the Assignment
To help students understand rhetorical analysis both in general and in relation to film. To introduce students to analysis of visual sources.
Assignment Description
Estimated time: 60-75 minutes (can be carried over to a second class for MWF schedules)
For this assignment, I showed the (approximately) first fifteen minutes of An Inconvenient Truth. I stopped the movie after the glaciers crumble, immediately following the pictures of Mount Kilimanjaro.
I began this assignment by passing out a notes sheet (on which they take notes during the film) and individual copies of the group questionnaire. The notes sheets help students remember what they're supposed to be watching for: argument and appeals, ethos and credibility, contextual references, structure and organization, images, and stylistic elements (music, camera angles, editing). Before you begin the film, you might want to contextualize the film briefly -- you could mention the success of the film, the awards that both it and Al Gore have won recently, and so on. (I did not, however, mention Al Gore's political past, Katrina, etc., and the groups did a good job of bringing up those issues during their analysis.) I also made sure to explain that we were not watching the film "to relax and enjoy it," but rather to analyze and think critically about how it was making its argument.
I broke them up into groups of four or five before viewing the film so that they could immediately begin discussing with their groups when the film finished.
As we watched the film, I made sure to pause it once or twice (for about twenty to thirty seconds) to allow students to "catch up" with their notes. They usually didn't need to "catch up," but the pause reminded them that they were supposed to be taking notes and not just passively watching the movie. As soon as I paused it, everyone snapped back to attention and began writing furiously.
After we finished watching the movies, the groups began answering the questionnaire using their notes sheets. I then passed out one copy of the movie poster to each group. When they had finished answering the questionnaire and annotating their copies of the movie poster, the groups reported their findings to the class. We also briefly discussed whether analyzing a film is different from analyzing an article or a book and if any of the skills they've learned through analyzing articles were helpful for analyzing the film.
Finally, I collected their movie posters and put them on the doc cam. Each group explained their notes and annotations.