Reading+in+the+Dark

Golden, John. //Reading in the Dark: Using Film as a Tool in the English Classroom//. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2001. Print.

//Reading in the Dark,// by John Golden has been an intriguing read. The reason why I chose to read this particular book was becuase I wanted to find out how film could make students better writers, and more literate in wriiting and in reading. I love watching movies, and I know the next generation will too because its somthing everyone enjoys in general. What I learned after I finished this 174 page book, that is filled with three major components when sampling a film: There is a rationale component, previewing and then the viewing day. A film could be analyzed and given in a weeks lengths of time or in a single period. There are differnt terms to film, but the main important factor is getting the students to grab the meaning, find the metaphors, understand why specific language is done, why specific shots are shot and how a scene is cretaed with special effects that make the reader understand what is going on or think a certain way; just like a book.One of the terms that was introduced in the begining of the book was 'close-u' or 'Close shot. "The close up had many parallels in literature. It is one of the most powerful tools a filmaker has: it is intimate and revealing, though somewhat intrusive and authoritative" (Golden 5).

Another term that was introduced in this book was focus. Focus is just more than just seeing something clearer or better, "There are are ways for a director to play with the focus in order to communicate something to the audience" (6), just like authors do with words they put in focus for the reader to follow and get a clear picture through words. When teaching a lesson and including film to help the students visualize it, they should be taught some terminology just like we are taught in regular English class. In order to know if they are getting what is begin produced and shown to them, and how the teacher knows that they are' getting it' is by what they reflect on and how they answer questions. "The film terms means nothing once they are removed from their effects. Instead, students must be encouraged to say, "I saw a low-angle shot that demonstrates __"(27). Film is another forum and inhances learning literature. A teacher knows when students are getting literature concepts during discussions, during the preview, during and after the film is given.

"Film and literature are not enemies; in fact, they should be used closely together because they share so many common elements and strategies to gain and keep the audience's attention" (36). For many of our future students, film is going to be the medium that will be much more readily accessible than print. This book also gave an emphasis and strategies on reading and film that could be used in our classrooms with worksheets and activities for different genre's of film. It was going towards reader response theary. This book also develops the purpose of film, to achieve active readers to possess and demonstrate how they can be introduced and practice skills with film adn then transferred to the written text (36). Activities that could be used in the classroom after going over a film in class, is doing a storyboarding. The students could first do a story board of all first their prediction from the preview of whats going to occur, then add themes, conflict, characters, inciting incident, climax just like they would for a book, then they could create one of their own using different forums, techonology, creativity being encouraged. "The idea is to ask students to imagine how a story might be filmed and to represent their ideas visually" (54).

Another activity/exercise that will get students attention and highly invovled is having them do a project where they get to pick the soundtrack to what ever film they have just finished viewing and analyzing and really thinking why the songs that they would pick for certain scenes work better and writing a description about each and their thinking on paper. This type of exercise, asks for students to picture the written text, but it requires that they know enough about each character, plot, setting of the story to justify their answer to their choice (58). The main idea and focus for these types of activities come from reading strategies, to choose, explain why, justify and making sure they know the text. Other skills used with these film activities are to have students predicting, responding, questioning, visualizing and practicing. I find using film in the classroom as a motivating tool for students to have in their classrooms. They will look forward to it, instead of being lectured everyday like we were in our generation, and it grabs their attention and at the end you have room as a teacher to have real conversation to see what they are getting from it. There will be pre-reading assigments and writing and response of course, but they will not mope about it because they have something to look forward to, a new teaching method. THey also get to experince some activities to films that are based off the canon, but see it visually and then can have time as an assigment to write down what they can relate to it, or any past memories that some film has reminded you of. This is another step to making literature come alive to them.