Amber Rutan

Artifact Commentary Five: How to Read a Film and Gatsby Film Response (Field)
Goals: 2
Standards: 1, 2

Since I began teaching at Harper Creek High School in Battle Creek, MI, one of our main literature
units for the English IV (senior-level English) class that I teach is Fitzgeralds book The Great Gatsby. To
help students better understand the film as well as give them an interesting visual for comparison,
students have watched at least one film version of The Great Gatsby. In 2013, the newest film version
was released, and became the focal point for my How to Read a Film unit that was inspired by my TE
838: Childrens Literature in Film college class from the summer of 2013. I wanted to take more time to
teach students how to critically watch and analyze film, especially in comparison to the literature they had
read in class. The other English IV teacher and I collaborated together to create these two documents for
our students. The first document is an introduction of How to Read a Film with two pages for students
to take notes on the assorted film techniques (like actors, setting, costumes, etc.) we would teach before
they viewed the film. The second document is a writing response where students had to pick two specific
film techniques that they had taken notes about during the film viewing and discuss what changes the
director made and why for a graded response.
This is one of my favorite lessons that translated directly from one of my MATC classes into my own
classrooms because it had such wonderful results and impact on my students. I felt that these two
documents show my ability to craft coherent units of study around big ideas (Standard 2); the big idea
here being visual literacy. I also felt by allowing my students to pick what two film techniques to analyze
in their final writing response, I was respecting my students as individuals, their diversity, their capacity
to learn (Standard 1) because they had a choice of what to respond to, and giving them that choice option
allowed for many creative reflections and a chance for me to see just how well they learned how to read
films. Overall, I felt this was a great personal example of me pursuing personal goals to strengthen
targeted areas of my professional practice (Goal 2) because I took specific goals from my TE 838
reflection and made them a reality in my classrooms after my college course had endedthose goals were
focused on students being able to analyze, compare film, and show 21
st
century literacy.
These two documents and the overall How to Read a Film lesson shows my evolving teaching
identity, as well as my ability to actually apply lessons from my MATC program into my own classroom.
As an MATC student, I have learned so much that it is has been very hard taking all of these insightful
lessons from so many different college courses and integrating them into my current practice. The follow-
through can be difficult, but this is a great example of me taking one valuable lesson and finding a
meaningful way to teach it to my own students. I have always shown films in my classes, but with some
hesitation because I didnt want students, parents, or administrators to view those lessons as free or
throw-away days. Since taking TE 838, and creating these two classroom resources, I feel more
confident and justified when I use film in my own classrooms. I know my students are still learning
crucial lessons related to literature. Plus, many students have told me that this was a fun lesson, not
because they were able to watch a movie, but because they learned a lot more about films as a literary
genre, and that makes me feel like a truly successful teacher.