In previous works, we have collaborated with film production companies and schools to produce educator resource guides for the popular novels and adapted films The Giver and The Watsons Go to Birmingham. Using these film adaptations of novels as a starting point, we take advantage of the differences in the ways the stories are told in each medium to design educator resource guides that target knowledge and skill development in key educational, aesthetic, and ethical areas (resources can be download in Malden Media’s Website).
For instance, we recently designed a series of projects that explored how teachers evaluated particular cross-media/cross-disciplinary educator resources designed to be implemented in middle schools. We selected a piece of classic young adult literature, The Giver (1993), an internationally well-known and best-selling young adult (fourth-grade Lexile reading level) dystopic fictional novel, authored by Lois Lowry. In the study, selected sixth-grade language arts classes from different regions of the United States (West, New England, Coastal South) used the story and our cross-media educator resources to promote student educational, ethical, and aesthetic awareness. We then analyzed in-depth interviews conducted with middle school (English) language arts teachers who had actively participated with us in an exploratory investigation of an intervention designed to promote early adolescents’ disciplinary knowledge and skills.
You might download the educator resources developed by us on Walden Media's websites
https://www.walden.com/blog/download-the-giver-educators-resource-guide/
https://www.walden.com/tv-movie/the-watsons-go-to-birmingham/
