Lights, Camera, Literacy!
Engaging, successful programs designed for middle school students!
A hands-on, integrated 21st century curriculum aligned to Common Core Standards
The Lights, Camera, Literacy! (LCL!) middle school series focuses on increasing literacy in both written and visual texts, implementing authentic use of vocabulary, improving collaboration skills, building confidence and motivation, and providing opportunities for higher-level thinking.
The LCL! series of courses allows for ease of differentiation and addresses visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners.
Lights, Camera, Literacy! (LCL!)
Students transfer their skills as viewers of film to skills as readers of the written page. They make inferences from screen to script to book. They use critical thinking and explore new vocabulary in the areas of lexicography, chess, and film.
Throughout the course, students reflect on their learning through student-to-student discourse and journal writing. They work collaboratively and use technology to produce authentic products—short films.
Lights, Camera, Literacy! at Argyle MS
Lights, Camera, Film Literacy! (LCFL!)
Students focus on film history as they learn more advanced literary skills. They are introduced to the physics of motion pictures and emulate early filmmaking techniques in creating original works. Students not only read select texts and screenplay pages, but are guided through adapting a novel for the screen.
The units include:
- How Movies Got their Start
- Silent Narrative Films
- Early Talkies, Early Color
- Genre Classics: The Golden Age of Hollywood
- Classic Adaptations: The Golden Age of Hollywood and Beyond
- Documentaries
- Animation
- The Business of Film and Film Festivals.
Lights, Camera, Media Literacy! (LCML!)
Students experience a timeline of media with emphasis on the history and physics of communication from troubadours’ and griots’ storytelling to today’s mass media world.
Students develop related multimedia projects within each of these units:
- Storytelling
- The Printing Press
- Newspapers and Print Advertising
- Photography and Film
- Radio
- Television
- Computers and the Internet
- Media and Our World.
Lights, Camera, Literacy! in the news
- Getting a reel education in filmmaking (Gazette.net)
- County: Students oughta be in pictures (Gazette.net)
- Middle School Students Are Now at Center Stage (Washington Post)
- Innovation: Filmmaking and Literacy (Education Week)
- Lights, Camera, Literacy! (As Heard on WTOP)
- A marriage of film and literacy education provides authentic learning opportunities. (AMLE magazine)