Students will choose an issue that impacts them personally, the school, or their community to document in a short movie. Students will interview individuals on both sides of the issue, integrate video clips, create the documentary, and write a reflection detailing the learning process.

Timing: 5-8 class periods
Grade Level: 6-12
Subject: Civics, Social Studies

Lesson description

Creating documentaries requires many higher-order thinking skills: students need to research and collect information, analyze and interpret that information, and edit the information into a coherent story. The documentary process yields a final product that showcases the knowledge students have acquired, regardless of subject area. Students can use documentaries to understand an issue, its complexity, and the perspectives through which different people view a subject. In an excellent documentary, students show the viewers different perspectives through carefully chosen video clips so the viewers arrive at their own conclusions. In this lesson, originally created by teacher Dan Greenwood, students will choose an issue that impacts them personally, the school, or their community; interview individuals on both sides of the issue; integrate clips about the issue with interview shots to document the issue; create the documentary; and write a reflection detailing the learning process.

Students will:

• Analyze an issue that impacts them personally, the school, or their community
• Plan video clips they need for a documentary and shoot the video (encourage the use of both A-roll and B-roll footage)
  

• Import videos of interviews and edit and integrate them into usable video clips by using Adobe PremiereElements 4
  

• Present their understanding of an issue and its impact through the medium of a documentary
• Provide a written reflection of their learning process

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