German Expressionism Mise en Scene PBL

         It is somewhat a disappointing to me that the California Common Core Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies, Sciences, and Technical Subjects, doesn’t actively support creative fiction writing, or visual media literacy.  The standards at the highest level of secondary education, those for grades 11-12, only deal vaguely with creative writing in fiction (through the disorienting dual standard of teaching the techniques non-fiction and/or fiction writing).  Although I find much to like in California Common Core Standards overall, I do see an over emphasis on cite and support, evidence-driven writing.  This is no surprise to me, this sort of writing supports close reading and other highly testable objectives.  In Language Arts, it is much easier to teach, and grade the critique of art than art (not to mention grade it).  There are ways to combine the two however.

         I do think that Writing Standard Three, in grades 11-12, allows the teacher engage in a lesson in the creative writing genre, and even apply those skills toward creating visual media.  Without going too much further, here are some the criteria that a teacher can grade art/creative fiction writing on (in this case, the art form is a kind of narrative writing), from Standard Three:

        

“Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

a. Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.

b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.

c. Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole and build toward a particular tone and outcome (e.g., a sense of mystery, suspense, growth, or resolution).

d. Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.

e. Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on what is experienced, observed, or resolved over the course of the narrative.”

         I propose that a project-based learning plan could be developed around this standard that allows for differentiation.  This project would create a scene in a silent film, in the style of the German Expressionism.  German Expressionist films were highly conceptual, with set and music serving as reflections of the mood of the character, stylized to reflect that character’s highly subjective perspective.  During their heyday, these films, like Metropolis (1927), featured highly elaborate sets, surreal themes, dialogue, narration, and moody musical scores and soundscapes.  You may notice that the creating of this project would engage different types of intelligences (visual-spatial or logical/mathematical in set construction, bodily-kinesthetic in set construction or acting, intrapersonal in directing or acting, interpersonal in writing, musical in the score).  I deliberately chose this genre because it relies, by convention, on so many elements (noise/music, set construction/lighting, acting, dialogue and narration) to drive not just the narrative, but also the mood.

(A frame from Daydreams and Nightmares, source: https://mubi.com/lists/german-expressionism-the-world-of-light-and-shadow)

         The students would self-assemble into two or three large groups to produce this film, and the final product should be short in length, five to ten minutes.  The resources available to students to edit films are available through apps on phones, though most schools have some AV resources if required.  Teachers should develop a plan and materials to teach their students about the genre.  After the students present their film, the class, through a peer-panel grouping format, should question the crew and cast.  The teacher might consider standards, besides the California Common Core, like the National Core Arts Standards: A Conceptual Framework for Arts Learning, to use in conjunction with the core standards; to develop a rubric for grading the final product.  All students should be held accountable for in some way explaining their artistic choices.  The teacher’s rubric should specify that all students would need to create a set and chose or create music and sound that evokes at particular mood experienced by the character(s) of the film, and that acting should reflect the experience of that mood.  Although this assignment involves writing the dialogue and narrative, as well as a critique, the teacher could make adaptations for ELL students by allowing them to work in their primary language for the film, provided that there is some translation.

PAIR_SHARE ACTIVITIES 

Pair and share activities remind of college English classes, I feel that had a professor or two who were masters of timing and pairing.  Small groups of students, especially young adults, have strong counter currents, the kinds that create drag against intellectual bravery (yes, that was criterion on one such teacher’s participation rubric, and a good one too, I believe); but if that can be said for small groups, the problem is only magnified by the stage fright of large class discussion.  Following this principle, the intimacy principle, the doctor-patient confidentiality principle, small groups should solicit more participation across personality types and academic aptitudes.  In the classrooms where I was a student, the best pair-share activities were long enough for the teacher to sit in and observe, or moderate, but also short enough to allow time for a larger group discussion.  The best groups were always dynamic, dialectic, and when the teacher would ask a member of the group to share a little bit of their conversation, it was evident that they had both/all revised their ideas somewhat as a result of the conversation.  It also helped students prepare when the pair-share activities were normalized, coming at the beginning of the class or something like that.  This way, students could come prepared with passages and ideas that they expected to share with each other.  Personally, I never opted to be the group’s recorder, but this isn’t a bad way to ensure that someone is paying careful attention.  Small groups are good way to audit and test ideas, in preparation for larger discussions.

FIVE WAYS TO DIFFERENTIATE CONTENT AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR ELL STUDENTS, STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS, AND GIFTED AND TALENTED STUDENTS

           

ELL Content Presentation Differentiation	ELL Learning Activity Differentiation
Present the ELL student with a text that uses a lot of cognate vocabulary words, older ELL students may be more familiar with these words than younger ones.	Discuss the meaning of those words.  Next, replace them with words that have Germanic roots.  This is a good way to scaffold the learning of new vocabulary.
Present ELL students with a visual text, like a film.  Try and select one with obvious cliffhangers.	Practice prediction strategies with these more basic texts.
Precede a written text with a visual text (like a literary adaptation) that includes subtitles.	Practice complex groups of comprehension strategies with this simpler text, but add a meta-cognitive to the activity by asking the student to explain which comprehension strategies he or she used (e.g., context clues, prediction, or note taking) and why.
Ask the student to present the class with a favorite text (including visual texts) from his or her first language.	Have the student translate a part of the text and select words that were difficult to translate.  Ask the student why these words are difficult to translate.
Provide the student with descriptive text and art materials.	Have the student create a visual representation of  that scene or person.

Content Presentation Differentiation for Students with Special Needs	Activity Differentiation for Students with Special Needs
Present student with a graphic organizer on the text, such as a concept map or Venn Diagram.	Have the student add a third wheel to the Venn Diagram or additional branches to the concept map, as the unit progresses.
For learning disabled students, provide a visual text with cliffhangers, exactly as done with ELL students.	Have the students practice prediction skills.
Present students with modeled Cornell notes, with the left hand, or essential question column, filled out.	Have your students fill in the right hand column, but provide some modeling here also.
Practice choral reading of the same text that the rest of the class is reading.	After each student stops reading (this is when they decide to), stop and discuss the most effective comprehension strategies for understanding that passage.  This is also a metacognitive strategy.
Read the same text as the rest of class with a student with special needs, but chunk it into smaller passages.	Practice comic book notes, where artistically inclined or visual learners translate a text into a comic strip.

Content Presentation Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Students	Learning Activity Differentiation for Gifted and Talented Students
Present students with primary sources in Social Studies and History classes that conflict with one another.	Have students use Bayesian statistics to posit a probable account of the event described.
Present students with primary sources from a first or early print editions (Project Gutenberg provided open access to original editions of text dating very far back in time, though a trip to rare manuscripts would also work) of literature.	Have students select a theme and organize an anthology around that theme and transcribe passages to include in an anthology.  Have the students to introduce their passages in writing.
Provide students with a dual language version of historic texts that date from different periods in the history of the English language (e.g., Beowulf for the Old English period) and a Modern English translational dictionary.	Have students attempt to create their own translation of a short passage and explain their reasons for translating a certain word differently. Have the students study the etymology of such words.
Provide students with a compilation of exemplary creative writing from the school.	Have students create a literary review from this work, complete with criticism.
Provide students with a non-fiction text dealing with an era that the rest of the class is studying.	Have students adapt the text to a short theatrical performance.

FIVE METHODS FOR DIFFERENTIATING CONTENT PRESENTATION AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS OF VARYING INTELLIGENCE TYPES/LEARNING STYLES WITH RUBRIC

When differentiating learning, whether through presentation of content or in learning activities, teachers must develop an effective cognitive formative assessment.  This will tell the teacher more about a student’s learning style, inter ailia.  Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences theory provides a broad template for the learning styles that teacher’s will encounter, with each student falling somewhere on a spectrum of seven (distinct but permeable) intelligences (visual-spatial, body-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, and logical-mathematical).  The names of the seven intelligences largely speak for their mode of learning.  Though there is more to these intelligences than the names alone suggest.  For instance the student whose intelligence is defined as musical may be more sensitive to environmental factors (e.g., background sound) than the student of interpersonal intelligence.  You may read more about this here.

In accommodating the students whose intelligence suggests a predisposition toward social activity (e.g., interpersonal or linguistic), a teacher may adapt her presentation of content to a conversation (class or small group, though small group discussions have the advantage of targeting just those students for this specific differentiation).  The teacher might then engage those students in a debate learning activity as format for their summative assessments. 

The learners whose intelligences could be characterized as graphic or conceptual (e.g., visual-spatial or logical-mathematical) may be provided a visual presentation of concepts that employs graphic representations and problem solving demonstrations.  In a Social Studies classroom, a teacher might use a video that explores political policies in relation to demographic information.  Using math skills, the teacher might create a learning activity where the students plot projected demographic changes in our country and suggest how certain political policy may change as a result.  So much good non-fiction on economic policy today deals with the intersection of Mathematics and Social Studies; again, using graphs from these texts is a good way to engage these visual-spatial and logical-mathematical learners in a Social Studies environment (or other types of learners in a Mathematics classroom).

Another way to engage these types of learners in a History or Social Studies classroom is to employ a very specific type of logic, called Bayesian statistics, which is used by some historians to make estimated guesses about the truth of conflicting accounts in ancient history.  The historian Richard Carrier, is an advocate of this approach and speaks about it in this video.  A teacher could present students multiple and conflicting accounts of an event from ancient history and model an learning activity on Carrier’s description of Bayes theorem applied to history.

For the teachers with open minds to interpretive art forms, they might engage students of the musical and body-kinesthetic intelligences through theatrical content.  They might screen literary adaptations (films or recording of plays) of works their class is reading and ask that they create their own.  They might be required to critique such a performance if this is more practical given the time constraints, and in either event, such students would be of course required to read the source text.

Intrapersonal intelligence learners may require a more considered presentation of content.  Since teaching is a social activity, and these students are considered the most autodidactic group, the teacher will have to consider carefully a set of materials to provide for such a student.  For instance, if a teacher were starting a chapter on certain literary movement, he could provide such a student with an anthology of texts from that movement and direct the student toward writing a research paper on that topic.  Intrinsic motivation will play a large role in engaging an intrapersonal student, so the flexibility of drafting a thesis and researching different topic should help get the ball rolling.

These are examples of the sorts of adaptations to presentation of content and learning activities that a teacher could use to accommodate students of varying intelligences.  It may be possible to create an over rubric that would assess all of these summative assessments.  I designed these learning activities for Social Studies/History and English classrooms, which are the two subjects that I am considering teaching.  However, in my opinion these subjects are fairly permeable, and these sorts of activities could be adapted to conform to many California Common Core ELD standards.  The rubric I created is designed to provide expectations for four basic types of activities, the debate, the graphic analysis projection, the interpretation or critique (these could come from non-fiction source texts, i.e., biographies or journals, for a more Social Studies/History direction).  The overall points achieved through the assignment should reflect same degree of learning, across approaches (i.e., a 2 overall in the debate reflects the same achievement, academically, as a 2 in adaptation or critique).  Finally, because at least two of these assignments are potentially group assignments (the debate, if not one-on-one, and the adaptation), there are effectively two grades, group and individual, that would add to the same overall grade (1,2, and 3 are 4,5, and 6 respectively, but do not denote higher scores than a 3 for an individual activity, like the research paper), as do the other overall assessments.

	Group	Literary Adaptation	Critique of Literary Adaptation	Debate	Research Paper	Graphic Analysis
1	Group failed to meet deadlines (motion or script).	Student does not explain any contribution to script or understanding of source text.	Student demonstrates little or no knowledge of source or comprehension of the adaptation.	The student relied on largely logical fallacies.	Student meets thesis statement deadline.	Student defined the direction of his or her research by defined deadline.
2	Group has clearly defined roles or debate team members have distinct arguments.	The student explains his or her role in performance and creating script.  He or she demonstrates knowledge of the source text.	Students comprehends the source text and adaptation and can interoperate differences between them.	Student understands motion, his or her arguments are not too narrow.  He or she has done useful research.	Student submits rough draft, with annotated bibliography by defined deadline (5 pages with at least 2 sources).	Student creates accurate graphic representation from data.
3	Group works together to create cohesive product or argument (winning debate by poll of undecided voters, or votes changed).  Performers reference source text in post performance discussion.	Student meets standards of 2, and explains contribution to conceptualization in reference to the source text.	Student meets standards of 2, but cited at least on outside source.	Student wins the debate.	Student made good use of suggestions made on rough draft.	Graphic representation includes verbal or written analysis of outcomes and interpretation.