Movies as Literature - Not quite what I had hoped! - Official Review ~~~ Recycled Post

I have decided to recycle some of my reviews in order to help out those that are looking for resources and information for the upcoming "academic year".

Once again, I have found myself having to rework our literature program for the year. I had Movies as Literature and was already to use it this year, but after a long discussion with KM, we decided to pass on it. 

Here are the main reasons it just didn't feel like a good fit for us: 

• It is not secular, we could have easily gotten passed that, but it could be of concern to some. 
• It has a good deal of older films - which we both generally like, but KM was not really interested in this particular selection. 
• It does feel as if it would be better suited to a group dynamic - like a movie group along the lines of a book group. 
• The outline was a bit intensive - read the first page of lesson before you watch, watch the movie start to finish no stopping or talking, review the questions, watch the movie again to answer questions, discuss answers and review movie again to find supporting details - just seemed like a bit of an overkill to me.  

As I love the idea of this program and will definitely be putting something together myself along these lines, this one was just not what we needed. There are some great websites that have free and inexpensive educator guides for movies - http://moviesheets.com/; http://www.teachwithmovies.org/ http://www.filmeducation.org/resources/ and many more - I have found the best way to find them is "free movie teacher guides" or "free teacher guide" & name of whatever patricular movie you are looking for.