Integrating Media/Film into Curriculum

There are a number of excellent ways to integrate media into the language arts curriculum. A few films I might use would be:

• The film Clueless to be paired with Jane Austen's Emma
• The film 10 Things I Hate About You with Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew
• I have always thought that the 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet would be a great supplement to the classic, perhaps with selected scenes from Shakespeare in Love or the 1968 version. I might also show West Side Story to demonstrate the Shakespearean theme of forbidden love revisited.
• I would show clips of the film version of Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals to go along with his partly autobiographical novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
• If my students were learning about the Civil Rights Movement, I would definitely show Remember the Titans to go along with a text like Coming of Age in Mississippi
• While studying 1984 or Brave New World, I would definitely show at least clips of V for Vendetta and perhaps even clips from the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/11
• Cast Away would be a great film to show while reading The Cay or Lord of the Flies
• I would love to find some reason to show It's a Wonderful Life and Iron Jawed Angels in my class as well. It's a Wonderful Life would be a good period film to introduce the era, while Ironed Jawed Angels would be a great introduction to women’s roles in the early 20^th century.
• I would love to use Comic Life, podcasts, and iMovies to give students the opportunity to do their own adaptations of various texts (particularly Shakespeare) and I would use VideoANT and VoiceThread when teaching students about media analysis whether it be of films, television shows or advertising.