How to Teach With Coraline the Movie
The first year I was tasked with teaching Film Studies as a general education English course (4 credits) with seniors, I was unsure where to begin. I had the guidance of a colleague, but our backgrounds and expertise with regards to film were so vastly different that I couldn't simply work with their materials. After aligning on course objectives and assessments, I had to come up with the content, films, and lessons I felt comfortable working with to meet those objectives.
My counterpart had been teaching film studies for years, so I was feeling insecure for a number of reasons -- they had established that "film studies was a real English class", the students that took their class were generally passionate about film and/or ready to work hard studying film. They had a rather distinct personality that students gravitated towards... I was not only new, but much younger, and probably have what can best be described as a more "behind the scenes" personality. I was worried that students that wound up in my class...
- Would be disappointed that I wasn't the other teacher
- Would be disappointed at the lack of experience teaching film I had
- Would think that the class is a joke
- Would think that it wasn't a real English class because "all we do is watch movies"
- Would think I'm ridiculous for pointing out so many minute details about shots and sequences
- Would claim there was no way a director cared about and planned all of those little things out (the same way they make that claim of authors).
So, I chose to use the movie Coraline to begin the year.
Why Coraline is a Great Movie to Teach With
A stop motion film inherently IS planned out to every minute detail, you can't really argue with that. Further though, the film has clear themes that are pretty easy for students to follow and analyze, but the "rules" of the fantastical worlds and plot lines in the movie aren't so explicitly described such that students are required to make inferences about what's going on and why. This is a rich playground for story analysis, character analysis, and there's just enough here for cinematic or film analysis as well.
There are non-film related footholds that students can grab on to to construct a deeper engagement and analysis of the film. Themes and motifs that relate to the story of Alice in Wonderland (a protagonist that's bored of their world, "down the rabbit hole" to an "other" dream world, a coy and dry humored cat, a "queen" of sorts that rules this other world... I'm sure you could find more). You might argue that there are some motifs reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel (a witch laying breadcrumbs to a colorful dream house that's really a trap). There are explicit references to a number of Shakespeare's plays (Romeo and Juliet in particular, and Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice do come up in the book, Coraline).
Genre Activators
These footholds help lead us to some very clear ELA unit activators that students, by the time they're in high school or late middle school, are probably very comfortable and familiar with:
- What's the difference between a fairytale, a fantasy, and a fable? A cautionary tale?
- What do fantasies have? What defines the genre?
- What makes a "scary" or "horror" story? What do they have? What defines the genre?
- What is a "coming of age" story? What do you think they might show or include?
Thematic Activators
- What is the role or "job" of a parent in a child's life?
- What's the difference between an adult and a child?
- What does it mean to "grow up"?
- Why are imagination and dreams important?
- What is it like to dream?
- Where is the line between excitement and danger?
While I was teaching this initially with seniors in a film focused class, the nature of the story meant I didn't need to focus on helping students to activate on the thematic questions very much - they'd already had quite a bit of practice in their prior years of English class. Genre can be helpful to students to think about more explicitly, but still, because they've likely been exposed to a variety of stories, helping lay a foundation to construct with can happen pretty quickly. This would give me some space to begin teaching students the vocabulary of film studies. The easiest way for me to explain that has been likening "cinematic devices" to the "literary devices" we're used to working with in English class. Instead of talking about the tone of words (which, you can still do in a film and you can talk about the tone of the visuals as well), you could talk about the composition, the angle, the distance, the mise-en-scene. And these are categories under which there are a variety of film form vocabulary terms students might learn and construct with. I would start with distance, angle, and depth of field.
A High Level Overview of the Coraline Film Studies Unit
- Preview the unit assessment / project (An analysis of the film - craft a theme/thesis statement and provide cinematic evidence to support it)
- Explicit Instruction of Film Form (FF) Vocabulary / Cinematic Device Vocabulary
- View the film together (usually in 2-3 sessions) with light Viewing Questions
- Viewing ~30 minutes (~1 act) during each 50 minute class would allow time for some brief instruction and practice analyzing the film with the new vocabulary
- Day 1 post-viewing: "I do" - I model the analysis heavily
- Day 2 post-viewing: "We do" - I continue to model, but guide and coach students to join me in the analysis even more so
- Day 3 post-viewing: "You do" - they work in small groups on their own and reach out to me for help and support
- As we watch in class, nightly homework film analysis practice that asks students to pick a shot from the day's viewing (even one that was touched upon in class discussion) and try analyzing it using some of the vocabulary that we learned. This is a film analysis writing practice.
- This means by the time we've finished viewing the film, students should have evidence from "act 1", "act 2", and "act 3" -- so it might link together to serve as an analysis of *something* over the course of the film
- I model an analysis of a theme over the course of the film for the students so they can see how they should approach gathering their evidence, and also see more of the vocabulary use at work (and not overthink it!)
- They go and craft their own analysis of the film (craft a theme statement and use cinematic evidence to support it). You can have them do this in PowerPoint/Google Slides format to differentiate, but I would often be focusing on having them continue to practice their analytical writing skills with film analysis paragraphs and essays as well.
This structure of a film-based ELA unit works for other films as well!