Make-a-Movie Differentiation Strategies
Make-a-Movie is a flexible tool that can be adapted to the needs of different learners, from struggling and ELL to high ability students. Following are some ideas:
Struggling Learners
- Create movies based on direct recall by listing or re-stating.
- Create movies based on a single vocabulary word or concept.
- Make a movie matching words with vocabulary or concepts.
- Teacher creates a simpler version of a BrainPOP movie.
- Pair with an advanced student to plan and produce movie.
High Ability Learners
- Create movies that require higher order thinking (e.g., comparing and contrasting concepts or describing how a famous historical person might react an event in the modern world)
- Expand on a BrainPOP topic by answering a question not addressed in the movie.
English Language Learners
Two hurdles for ELLs are conquering language and anxiety. The fun, motivating nature of Make-a-Movie lowers their affective filter by making it easier to engage. And. the ability to erase and re-do helps to relieve stress.
Make-a-Movie offers opportunities for ELLs to listen, speak, read and write English, including:
- Talking about or explaining movies
- Writing about movies using just single-word labels or short phrases
- Recording to hear their pronunciation
- Compare recording with computer-generated voice
Pre-Teach
Pre-teaching is an effective way to prepare ELLs for using Make-a-Movie. For example, you may pre-teach writing the introductory letter by providing a letter template for students to fill in, or if they know how to write questions, provide sentence prompts as follows:
- How do/does ______
- Why do/does ______
- Why is/are ______
Modeling is another useful pre-teaching strategy. Display Make-a-Movie on the whiteboard and use think alouds as you model how to use each feature: Build, Add Sound, Annotate, and Draw.
