Submitted by Mike Smart

Objectives:

Content:
Students will...

• display an understanding of the description and characteristics of selected Japanese movies.

Cultural:

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will...

• display an ability to ask and answer basic questions about a movie and its content.
• exhibit increased understanding and competence with key movie industry vocabulary.

Language: Content Compatible
Students will...

• accurately use aizuchi (support language) in reacting to student answers.

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will...

• work cooperatively in pairs. Each member will carry out his/her role as assigned.

Time Frame:

One 50-minute class

Materials Needed:

• Movie Information Activity Sheets A & B (see Attachments)
• Either the teacher’s sample website of a favorite movie, or use the one provided. A computer/LCD projector linked to the internet would be best to display this.
• Vocabulary Sheet (see Attachments)
• Movie Question Sheets (2 per student) (see Attachments)

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Purpose:
The unit assessment (lessons 6-10) is an individual project in which the students will create a small website about a Japanese movie they have watched. In order to be ready to make the website in lessons 6-8 of this unit, it’s important that the students have finished watching the movie by the start of lesson 6. Along these lines, the purpose of Lesson 3 is to show the students what is expected of them for their summative assessment, to get them to decide on a Japanese movie to watch, and to let them practice some more of the terms that will be used extensively in the unit.

Thinking linearly, it would make more sense to have this lesson right in front of the unit assessment, but I have purposely moved this lesson forward in order to give the student’s more time to obtain and watch a Japanese movie. Also, with this background in mind, students may find Lesson 4 more helpful in choosing a Japanese movie to watch.

(Note: Alternatively, if a class doesn’t have the resources or skills to make a website, a teacher could make the unit assessment a PowerPoint presentation or a movie poster, and reorganize this lesson along those lines.)

Pre-task:
The teacher explains that for the summative assessment on the movie unit, students will be expected to do four things. First, they are to find and watch one Japanese movie. The movie can watched in whatever language the student wishes, but they can be encouraged to watch it at least once in Japanese. Second, they are to prepare a small website about the movie that contains basic information about the movie. Third, they are expected to be able to answer general questions about the movie they have watched.

The teacher then explains that in this class will listen to a presentation about a sample website to show them what is expected for their final projects. In order to be able to understand the presentation better, the class will first do a warm-up Information Gap activity to help practice the vocabulary. To get this going, the teacher may want to ask the class if they have seen any movies recently, and then ask them a few more questions about the movies. Next, the teacher passes out a Movie Question Sheet & Vocabulary Sheet (attached) to each student. After the students read the question sheets, the teacher can help clear up any confusion.

During-task:
Next the teacher passes out Movie Information Sheet A to half the students and Information Sheet B to the other half. The teacher pairs the students up so that an A is paired with a B. The teacher asks the students to first read their sheets to get familiar with the information.

Once the students understand the questions and the content of their movie sheets, they start to ask each other questions about their partner’s movie, recording the answers as they go. The teacher monitors the activity. After the students have completed the activity, answers are checked as a class.

Now that the class is a bit more familiar with the vocabulary, the teacher explains that he/she will be showing them a sample website and giving a short presentation (attached). The teacher then hands out one more Question sheet, and tells the class to follow along with the website presentation, and fill in the answers to the questions. The teacher then uses the website to make a brief presentation.

At the end of the presentation, students may ask the teacher questions about the presentation to get any answers they missed, or to ask other questions about the movie. The class can then check their answers.

Post-task
Now that the class has seen what is expected of them for the unit assessment websites, the teacher can explains in more detail what they need to do to get ready to make their websites:

Before Lesson 6 (the first lesson of the unit assessment) begins, each student is to find and watch a Japanese movie and to take notes on the key facts about the movie. They will be given three class periods (Lessons 6-8) to work on their websites. The teacher can also explain in a bit more detail how the final assessment will work (see the unit assessment outline for more information) and what students will need to include in the their websites.

To conclude, the teacher explains that the next two lessons will involve a more in-depth look at some of the characteristics of Japanese movies and the Japanese movie industry.

Assessment:

In addition to informally assessing student performance during the oral activity, the teacher may wish to collect and informally review the answer sheets from the movie presentation to get a better sense of student performance.

References and Resources:

These can be given to students to help them find a movie

Japanese film website:
http://www.midnighteye.com/

Reviews of Japanese monster movies:

http://www.godzillatemple.com/index2.htm

GreenCine is an online rental DVD rental website that focuses on animation. It has good synopsizes of movies:

http://www.greencine.com

Website references included in sample website.

Attachments:

NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)

L3 Movie Question and Vocabulary Sheets

L3 Sample Student Website (Seven Samurai, with external links)

L3 Movie Sheets A & B

A Lesson from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota