Thursday, December 3, 2015

Schools ! Let's include Star Wars into curricula " Resources !





Star Wars : The Forces Awaken
Star Wars : The Force Awakens comes in three days, the 18th December 2015. 

 I began my career as a young teacher in 1977, when Star Wars: A New Hope was released. I was gone at the cinema with my students (Literature) to watch the movie on a big screen. 

The movie begins : " A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." and then the explosion of music. Wow! 

 And just liked that we were sucked into an adventure we had never seen before.

 A boy, a princess, an old man, and a pirate with Bigfoot as a friend. Thus began my life-long fascination with sci-fic with Star Wars.

 As a teacher I could understand the importance of making learning engaging to my students' lives.

 Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Back to the Future helped accomplish this as well Jules Verne novels.






https://cdn1.theodysseyonline.com/


 Over the years I've used them to teach several topics, but my favorite is to use Star Wars in teaching mythology and science fiction (the narrative) to students in Literature courses. 


Finally, with other students, time passses so quickly, another classes, another young adolescents, we watched Return of the Jedi studying historical connections to be made studying literature novels.
Star Wars : The Force Awakens  is the first movie of the new trilogy not with George Lucas but on Disney. The Force Awakens was announced to hit the box office on Dec. 18, 2015. Three days away from The Force Awakens.


This film is going to show a new generation of Jedi knights and new storm troopers. There is going to be a new villan since the Emperor and Vader were killed in Return of the Jedi.





The original cast
http://coolerinsights.com/

One surprise is that some of the original cast is returning. There will be appearances made by Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, and John Boyega’s Finn, Chewbacca.

The first film of the new generation, The Force Awakens, was directed by JJ Abrams, who was trusted with the successful reboot of another venerable space series: Star Trek, remember?




Education:

I wrote about the exciting Star Wars: The Force Awakens in Portuguese (my mother language) as an invitation to my colleagues to include into curricula the movie on a interdisciplinary learning school project : Science, literature, imagination (science-fiction) and arts.

You may introduce the Star Wars movies to a new generation of light saber-wielding super fans. So how can they watch all the films if the school doesn’t already have them?

Your school library may have DVD copies that can be borrowed. If that’s not possible for some or all of movies, you ask friends, students, parents, you know somebody who owns them all, though perhaps only on VHS.


On this post, based on the premise that students become actively involved in learning when the learning is relevant, imaginative, and engaging, this movie will provide something to students of all ages. For all, it's a chance to see themselves as the hero's that they already are or hope to be.


Through interactive resources, they will become immersed in science history and cultural studies - literature, arts, music - as they will explore that famous galaxy. Beyond the movie we can create interesting and successful interdisciplinary projects as I wrote.






💢Resources:

Walt Disney offers on the Star Wars website some interesting tools (not all of them (there is a lot of marchandising), but you can visit it and make a pre-selection of the resources that can be explored to introduce them yo to your students.

Of course there are games and apps for all ages. Students love to learn by playing. So do a research on the website and select according to the age of your students and level you are teaching.

The Guardian also display some interactive resources that you can visualize and consider to include into your classes:




Music:

The movie also boasted a spectacular soundtrack from composer John Williams. You can ask your colleague, the Music teacher to include this masterpiece into a lesson or two. 



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✅Activities:
2015 was a year full of awesome scientific events:

A cross-curricular school project:

  • Languages: English, French, Portuguese (science-fiction), grammar, vocabulary;
  • Sciences
  • Arts
  • Music

 May the Force be with you !

G-Souto

14.11.2015
actualizado 21.02.2026
Copyright © 2017G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Licença Creative Commons
Schools " Let's include Star wars saga into curricula !  by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 

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