Building and refining skills for literacy analysis and preparing students with academic language is a common goal among English Language Arts teachers. The process to achieve that goal will vary among teachers and classroom environments.
Students in Sarah Murray’s 9th grade English class at the Kearny School of Digital Media and Design have taken an interdisciplinary approach to this concept and are using a short story to make decisions about camera angles based upon the analysis of what a particular scene portrays. As a culminating task, they worked as a group to build their claim for the camera angles and presented their findings to the class. Through this learning they are increasing their literacy skills while building context and understanding for this year’s digital media project entitled "Seeds of Sustainability" with Strategic Energy Innovations.
This unit of study not only refined their skills for literary analysis, but it also prepared them to make intentional decisions based on audience and purpose. This is just one example of ways that the Kearny teachers integrate student experience to align and build skills across content area.
