90-second Newbery Films created by students; started by author James Kennedy

Kennedy, J. (2013, July 4). 25 successful 90-second Newbery videos. Retrieved December 1, 2014, from http://jameskennedy.com/2013/07/04/the-25-most-popular-90-second-newbery-videos-so-far/

Summary: These are 25 of the most popular student-created 90-second Newbery films.  James Kennedy created a contest for students to make films that cover the entire plot of a Newbery winner or honor book in approximately 90 seconds.  

Review:  These films are great to watch when teaching Newbery books.  They are fun and display creativity of a variety of genres.

Diversity: Some films include students of color. However, many of the Newbery books are white in general.

Suggestions for Teachers: Great to inspire students to do their own book projects. An engaging idea to foster reading the whole book, identifying key plot points, collaborating and creating.

1. Quantitative: N/A
2. Qualitative: Students with knowledge of the particular Newbery book will understand these films better. However, these students could be used as a pre-reading activity to build schema. They are mostly organized chronologically. Some films use the actual dialogue from the text itself. Depending on the book, the language could be contemporary or more from that period. Students will be able to make meaning with the visual context clues.

Content Areas: English, Drama

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

Relevant links: James Kennedy

Subjects/Themes: English, Drama

Awards: N/A

Series Information: N/A

Romeo + Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann

Luhrmann, B. (Director). (1996). Romeo + Juliet [Motion picture]. USA: 20th Century Fox.

Summary: This is a modern day adaptation of William Shakespeare's classic set in Venice Beach, CA.

Review:  This is a fantastic adaptation!  So engaging with the music, costumes.  Students love it.

Diversity: A predominantly White cast although Mercutio is Black and Tybalt is Latino.

Suggestions for Teachers: Great to use when teaching the play and also alongside Zeferelli's classic version.

1. Quantitative: N/A
2. Qualitative: Students with knowledge of the play will have a stronger understanding of this text. While the costumes and setting are largely contemporary, the language is Shakespeare's original. It is well-edited and students will make meaning based on the visual context clues.

Content Areas: English, Drama

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

Relevant links: Wikipedia

Subjects/Themes: English, drama, Romeo and Juliet

Awards: See here.

Series Information: N/A

The Matrix film directed by The Wachowskis

Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, A. (Directors). (1999). The matrix [Motion picture]. US: Warner Bros.

Summary: Thomas Anderson leads a mundane life as an office worker by day and a hacker by night.  He meets Morpheus who convinces him that once he knows the truth, he will never want to return to his old life and will try to convince others to see the truth too.

Review:  While there are some violent scenes, this is an excellent film for high school students when grappling Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

Diversity: Talk about characters who do not fit the "norm". Here it is cool to be alternative. Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne are also men of color.

Suggestions for Teachers: Show clips of this film while teaching Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Read it with Malcolm X's "Learning to Read". What other texts talk about the truth being powerful?

Reading Level:

1. Quantitative: N/A
2. Qualitative: High interest and complex ideas. Students will be able to use this film to make meaning of Plato. Knowledge of computer hacking will help students make meaning. Overall, easy to follow.

Content Areas: English, Philosophy

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

Relevant links: Wikipedia, History Guide

Subjects/Themes: philosophy, Plato, English

Awards: See here.

Series Information: N/A

Teaching Books.net website

Teaching Books. (2001). Retrieved November 26, 2014, from http://teachingbooks.net

Summary: This is a one-stop shop website with supplementary online materials about all the books students read in schools.  Lesson plans, online videos with authors, readers theater scripts, interviews, text complexity analyses are all in one database set up for easy use.  

Review:  This is a great place for teachers and educators to find the vast collection of resources out there on the web about the books their students are reading.  It is a time saver.

Diversity: Every book I've searched for has been available; some have more limited information than others, but they exist. This includes authors of color.

Suggestions for Teachers: Use this website resource to help plan your ELA class and for students to have access to authors.

Reading Level:

1. Quantitative: N/A
2. Qualitative: Easy to use layout and materials are student friendly. This website will help teachers and students alike get schema for the text they are reading and more in-depth knowledge of the author of their text. This could be used either before reading the text or after to get insight on the reader's craft. No prior knowledge is necessary except for how to search a database.

Content Areas: English, Social Studies

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.1
Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.2
Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.3
Analyze how and why individuals, events, or ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.

Relevant links: Teaching Books

Subjects/Themes: teaching resources, ELA, Common Core, text complexity, lesson plans

Awards: N/A

Series Information: N/A

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (Folger Shakespeare Library Edition)

Mowat, B. A., & Werstine, P. (Eds.). (2011). Folger Shakespeare Library: Romeo 
     and Juliet by William Shakespeare. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. 


Summary:  A longstanding grudge between two families has caused ongoing hostility in Verona, Italy.  The Montagues' son Romeo is out of sorts because he is in love with a woman who shares no interest in him.  His cousin Benvolio encourages him to go to a party to find another woman.  They crash the Capulet's family, the great enemy of the Montagues.  Capulet is hoping to marry his daughter Juliet off to County Paris.  While at the party, Romeo sets eyes on Juliet and falls in love at first sight.  The two decide to marry during a famous balcony scene later that evening.  But many unfortunate events caused by the families' feuding ultimately leads to their dual suicide.

Review:  This is by far my favorite edition to teach.  I probably taught with it 14 times with 9th grade students.  The format and the spacing is good for kids.  The notes provided on the left side of the page are accessible to students and the short summaries for each scene are easy to understand.  Folger also provides a lot of online support materials.

Suggestions for Teachers:  Use Folger's Shakespeare Set Free to help make teaching this text really interactive.  There are lots of activities from tableaus to blocking and rewriting scripts that make this by far a favorite unit for 9th graders who are sometimes craving reading a classic they've heard about over and over.  Do a side-by-side reading of Gareth Hinds' graphic novel and show clips from Zeferelli and Luhrmann's films.  Give them the plot in advance.  Even use key lines to act out the scene.  Create improvs of modern day scenarios to help engage  (I have written a bunch of these and can email!)  Look at modern Romeo and Juliet scenarios in the world as a connection to social studies.

Reading Level:

1. Quantitative: Lexile 720L, ATOS Book Level 8.6, Readability Grade Level 4.8, Flesh-Kincaid 3.3, RMM 7.7 *There seems to be some inconsistency in the quantitative assessment.  From my background of teaching Romeo and Juliet, I would lean towards 8th-9th grade reading level.
2. Qualitative:  Reading a play is a complex task on its own.  The reader is left to visualizing time and place and shifts in setting.  The organization here is very complex as there are subplots.  Language can be exceedingly complex but Folger does a great job of simplifying key lines and adding accessible summaries on the left hand side of the page.  There are multiple levels of meaning but a student doesn't need to understand all of them to get the gist of the play as a first pass.  Of course there are dated historical and some Biblical references, but with the support this edition provides, the knowledge demands are lessened.  The young, forbidden love theme and disagreement with parents will be easy to connect with most teens.

Content Areas: English (teaching Shakespeare), Social Studies

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.3
Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.5
Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.7
Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.9
Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.

Relevant Links: There is so much out there just doing a quick search on google. But I love the Folger Shakespeare Library! Folger Digital Texts, Folger Shakespeare Library

Subject/Themes: love, forbidden love, parental pressure, Shakespeare, gangs, feuds, poetry, sonnet, play, drama

Awards: N/A

Series Information: Folger Shakespeare Library Series

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo & Juliet adapted and illustrated by Gareth Hinds

Hinds, G. (2013). The most excellent and lamentable tragedy of Romeo & Juliet: A play by William Shakespeare (G. Hinds, Illustrator). Somerville, MA: Candlewick.

Summary: This is a faithful Romeo and Juliet story with actual lines from the play, excerpted here in this graphic novel adaptation. Two feuding families cause a series of catastrophes that cause two young lovers to commit suicide. Aside from a diverse cast of characters including an African American Romeo and a South Asian Juliet, this graphic novel is set in picturesque Verona, the lines are directly Shakespeare's and the costumes are true to the period aside from a few above-the-knee skirts.

Review: This is a beautiful adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Hinds' choice to make all the major characters people of color will make this timeless tale more relevant and accessible to the diverse youth who study this text in 9th grade. The pictures will also help students visualize Shakespeare's language. A great accompaniment to the play itself.

Suggestions for Teachers: Have students read the play scene by scene and then read the Hinds' adaptation after each scene. Have students compare the play to the graphic novel. Students can analyze whey Hinds chose to excerpt the parts he did. Have students analyze if the drawings represent the text. Who does a better job of staying true to the text? Hinds? Zeferelli? Consider Hinds' author's note at the end. Have students analyze the effect of the ethnicity of Hinds' characters. Should he have changed them? Why or why not?

Reading Level:

1. Quantitative: Lexile 700L, ATOS Book Level 5.6, Flesh-Kincaid 2.9, Readability Grade Level 4.8, RMM 12.8  *There seems to be some inconsistency in the quantitative assessment.  From my background of teaching Romeo and Juliet, I would lean towards 8th-9th grade reading level.  With graphics, this could be used as early as 6th grade.
2. Qualitative: This graphic novel version of Romeo & Juliet is very complex mainly because of the language. The text organization is clear and chronological. The use of graphics definitely assists in interpreting the text. The language is dense and complex and contains a lot of figurative language. There is vocabulary that is difficult although Hinds does a good job a simply defining key terms. Shakespearean language is exceedingly complex for middle schoolers and the sentence structure here will be difficult for one who is a novice with Shakespeare. There are multiple levels of meaning but the reader doesn't necessarily have to understand all the puns in order to fully grasp the plot. Hinds does an excellent job in providing schema of the time period and setting in his illustrations. For first time R & J readers, students will be able to access the theme of falling for the "wrong" person and societal pressures to do things you don't want to do.

Content Areas: English (teaching drama, Shakespeare)

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.3
Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.5
Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.7
Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.9
Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.

Relevant links: New York Schools Teaching Guide, Shakespeare Navigators, Folger Shakespeare Library

Subjects/Themes: forbidden love, parental pressure, love at first sight, Shakespeare, gangs, feuds, grudges, poetry

Awards: Kirkus Best Teens Book 2013, starred review from The Horn Book, nominated for YALSA's Great Graphic Novel for Teens

Series Information: N/A