Children and Education in World Cinema

Classroom Activities

Instructional Sequence

The unit will start with watching Which Way Home to help students understand the challenges and opportunities facing young people in difficult circumstances. We will also read an article from Scholastic that details why children come from Central America to the United States. From there, I plan on reading Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario with students in class. As we read the text, the class and I will discuss each chapter and reflect on challenges and opportunities that Enrique’s experiences bring up. Finally, we will view Under the Same Moon, a film the students will review in written form. Once students write their reviews, they will read a few professional reviews from a curated list to see how individuals who are active film critics reviewed the film. Students would then share their thoughts about the film and revise their own critiques based on what we have learned throughout the unit. The result will be the submission of their final reviews. When I introduce students to a new unit, it is guided by Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings. This is required by my district and may be helpful for you. These are the big questions that students are supposed to work towards understanding throughout our study and what they should learn because of our study.

Essential Questions

1. What challenges and opportunities complicate as well as incentivize people from Latin America to migrate to the United States? How can students engage in the larger conversation associated with immigration as a topic?
2. What is a film review as a genre of writing? What are key elements that go into writing a film review?

Enduring Understandings/Big Ideas

1. There are many challenges that induce individuals to come to the United States from several countries throughout Latin America. Some of these challenges are created by poverty and fear of violence in the home country. Many view migration to the United States as an opportunity for an improved quality of life, but movement to the United States often creates another set of problems such as adapting to a new culture, separation of families, and other difficulties that complicate life and relationships. We can use both film and texts to inform our thinking about the topic and reflect on the issue and how it is depicted through writing.
2. A film review is usually written by a film critic most often in newspapers or online; it attempts to share a film’s quality and it makes a recommendation whether it is worth viewing. While it is not a type of scholarly writing, it does maintain a formal tone and bases its recommendation on technical aspects of the film such as performances of the main actors, choices made by director, a bit of research on the making of the film, and other factors. The general outline of a film review is introduction, plot summary, description of acting/performance, analysis, conclusion/evaluation.⁵⁷ See the teacher resource section for a guide from Duke University that explains each element in greater detail.

Activity #1-Watch Which Way Home

The first key classroom activity is watching the documentary Which Way Home. I would break this up over two or three periods. The run time for the documentary is 83 minutes, so the teacher could decide to show it over two forty-minute chunks or over three thirty-minute chunks. I have found better success with my sixth-grade students showing it over three days rather than two days. While watching, I give my students a list of questions that they need to answer while viewing. I do this for two reasons. The first is to ensure students listen carefully and stay focused while watching; I remind students that we are watching for information and to gauge their reactions, not watching for entertainment. By having questions to answer, students pay careful attention to detail. These are the questions that I use below:

Which Way Home Questions

1. How does the film start? What is happening? ________________________________________________
2. How did the 13-year-old boy get to the border? __________________________
3. ___% of people that ride the trains are children traveling alone.
4. Central American children must cross the border from _________________ into Mexico.
5. The trip across Mexico is ________________ miles long.
6. Kevin is _____ years old and is from _________________. He wants to go to America because _________________________________________.
7. Kevin is traveling with ___________ (at the start). Kevin knows him because ________________________________________________.
8. Why did Fito leave his parents? _______________________________________________
9. What did Fito want in America? __________________________________________.
10. What was life at home like for Kevin? _______________________________________.
11. How old is Jose? _______
12. Based on where Jose is, what do you think it means to “detain” someone? Make a conjecture (educated guess). ___________________________
13. Why does Juan Carlos leave his family to go to the United States? _____________________________.
14. How many kids get caught trying to enter the United States? __________________
15. What is Grupo Beta? ___________________________________.
16. What is the House of Migrants? __________________________________________________________
17. What advice does the director of the House of Migrants give? ____________________________
18. Where are Olga and Freddy from? ____________________
19. What happens to Eloy from Techucan, Mexico? ______________________________________
20. What happens to Rosario’s body? __________________________________________________
21. What is the problem with Lecheria? __________________________________________________
22. What happened to the boys in Lecheria? __________________________________________________
23. What happened to Kevin in the United States? _____________________________________
24. What does Kevin’s mom hope for Kevin? What does his stepfather think of him? __________________________________________
25. What bad habit does Yurico have? ______________________’
26. What are your thoughts on Which Way Home? Continue answering on the back of this sheet.

Activity #2-Read the nonfiction article Alone and Afraid from Scholastic and Enrique’s Journey

After watching Which Way Home, students want to understand why children from Latin American countries cannot just enter the United States. They want to better understand why illegal immigration is so controversial. The article Alone and Afraid helps to explain the controversy in ways that are logical for sixth graders. Scholastic has a wonderful feature built into the article that allows you to modify the text according to Lexile for the purposes of differentiation. With my students, we take a period and read and annotate the text. I use the Notice and Note strategy with my students for nonfiction. Without going into detail, it is a procedure created by a couple of Heinemann teachers that helps students to look for and develop thoughts about key details in nonfiction. I have included a link to the signposts in the resource section.

There are multiple versions of Enrique’s Journey. There is the version written for adults, there is the young adult version of the book that is geared towards younger audiences, and there are also modified versions that have been shortened and published in serial fashion for newspaper readers. Based on the reading levels of your students and the time that you must spend teaching the unit, you need to choose the level of the text that makes most sense for your teaching situation. My recommendation would be to look at the different versions of the text to decide before you plan. I have included a link to one of the modified versions of the text online that is a bit shorter in the resource section. This is helpful if you are short on instructional time.

Activity #3-Watch Under the Same Moon; Write a Film Review

Students hold up what they have learned from Which Way Home, the article Alone and Afraid, and the book Enrique’s Journey against what they view in the film Under the Same Moon. It is hoped that students think critically about the choices that the filmmaker made in ways that are nuanced and thoughtful.

First, I will provide students with a graph organizer that acts as an outline to help students organize their thoughts and provide them structure because they have never written a film review before; it would be set up as a table and include these general areas:

• In the opening paragraph, students need to include the title, director, genre, setting, and a plot overview that does not give away the ending.

• In the next paragraph, students need to dive into the important characters focusing on actors who play the roles, important moments that they depict, and an explanation of characterization-how did the actors play the roles? What did they think of their performances?

• In the third paragraph, students need to explore the texture of the film. In other words, some of the choices of the filmmaker and explain how those choices impacted how the film felt as it was viewed. This includes potentially addressing music, costumes, camera work, sound, and special effects and how the film was set.

• In the fourth and final paragraph, students must focus on a theme and make a recommendation about the film.⁵⁸

In the resource section, I have included a film review guide from Duke University that could be shared with students. It articulates the points from above with slightly deeper elaboration and has a brief list of resources for students to explore related to film reviews.

Once students have finished drafting, it is helpful for them to look at some professional film reviews of Under the Same Moon. I have included a list of professional reviews on the movie in the teacher resource section. Select ones that you think might provide greater insight for your students. For students who need even more specific support, I might share the student example that one of my students wrote to help show how information should be organized.

Under the Same Moon Film Review Rubric

Total Points  /20= ___________