Videos as Educational Tools

A video can function as a valuable component of an instructional unit. I use the video of The Little Mermaid as the core for a two-week literature unit which encompasses development of reading, writing, and research skills in my general and accelerated seventh grade English classes.

We begin our study by viewing the movie from the Walt Disney studios. As we watch the film, I ask students to make a list of all the characters. After the lists are complete, I divide the class into groups of four to five students. Each group has the responsibility of writing a description for one or two characters. We discuss
character sketches, emphasizing that the description includes traits of personality and behavior as well as appearance.

We then go to the library to find sources of names. The better sources not only list possible names but give meanings, origins, examples from history and/or literature. We also use such books as Your Name: All about It by Mary Price Lee and Last, First, Middle, and Nick: All about Names by Barbara Shook Hazen. I invite students to bring baby-naming books and other appropriate references from home. We take the research books to the classroom to go to work.

Each group now has the job of finding the names of the characters and deciding if the name “fits” or not. The students find to their amazement that the names are representative of the personalities of the characters in the film. We then discuss why these names were chosen and what those choices say about the individuals who made them.

Since not all characters in the film have names in the traditional sense, students have to use standard dictionaries to find meanings for some. For example, the sea witch’s two eels are named Jetsam and Flotsam, which are words meaning
trash, something to be cast off. The students quickly pick up that in so naming them, the sea witch is making a statement about their worth, even though she speaks of them in very affectionate terms. They are disposable, worthless, as
she demonstrates in the movie. And so we progress through the entire cast. Eric is a Norse name meaning strong, handsome. Ariel means light, airy, and was used by Shakespeare for a spirit. Triton is the mythological god of the sea. Sebastian is not so easy as the previous examples. The students may
have to be prompted, since the etymology doesn’t fit the situation. Drawing on the music background of some students, I will ask students if the musician in the movie might be the namesake of a famous musician. Students may figure it
out on their own, or they may need to resort to using a dictionary of composers or other music reference. What they eventually figure out is that Sebastian is part of the name Johann Sebastian Bach. (They speculate that, to avoid confusion, he
preferred to be addressed by his middle name.)

At this point we make a digression so that students can research their own names. In my class, Michael and Michelle were dismayed to discover that they really had the same name. And the whole class roared when David
announced that his name meant “chosen one” and my name meant “barbarian.”

After some discussion of our own names, we go back to the library to research Hans Christian Andersen, his background and contributions to our literary history. Student groups are assigned specific information to locate. Since we completed a unit on library research skills earlier, students are already familiar with the concept of the best source for specific information. I give the groups the name Hans Christian Andersen and the fact he was from Denmark.

One group uses an atlas to locate Denmark in the world community. They also list all the facts they can find about the country from that source. (I don’t allow them to use the encyclopedia as a source on this project because I want to reinforce earlier learning about all the other sources of information that are available.) A second group finds out about Denmark in Andersen’s days by using history books.
The third group uncovers information about modern Denmark, and the fourth group finds out about Andersen himself by using biographical dictionaries and author books. Upon completion of their research, each group compiles a report to be shared with the class.

The next step is to study the fairy tale of the little mermaid as found in literature. Many students are amazed to learn that the Walt Disney studios did not create the character of the little mermaid. With that discovery, we are ready to read the story as a class. Since even seventh graders like to be read to on occasion, and students learn to read better by hearing others, I begin reading the classic
aloud.

When I used this activity recently, I developed laryngitis the second day into the reading. Several students, even reluctant readers, volunteered to read since no one wanted to stop. One student, a noted clown, actually became the best reader as he performed for the class. Soon they begged me not to pass the book to someone else. This young man had found an outlet for his creative energies.

As we read we noted vocabulary words on the board. Later we would discuss meaning and usage and add the words to the students’ notebooks. After we finished the story we discussed the differences between the printed version
and the movie version. We talked about the different requirements of the different media and why some of these differences were necessary to convey the story and why others came about because of the taste of the movie-going public.

One student had brought a copy of the story from home intending to read along as we read in class. She soon announced that my version wasn’t the real one since it was different from hers. We discovered that the two versions had different translators and this led to story changes produced by translation. It had not occurred to the students that Andersen did not write in English.

A word of caution. As we made our comparison, students brought up the implied message of an eternal life in the original version and that the little mermaid could choose that life if she wished or she could satisfy her immediate desires and have a greatly limited life span. My class was able to discuss this as a theme in literature without offending anyone’s personal convictions. However, depending
on your own situation and community climate, you might want to avoid this discussion.

For an evaluation of the unit I asked the students to choose three additional characters and write a character sketch of them. Then I asked them to compare and contrast the two presentations of the story—the written version and the film
version. Finally they were to tell which version they liked better and why they preferred it.

Predictably, most of the students chose the film version as their favorite, mainly because of the “happy-ever-after” ending. One or two of the “thinkers” thought the original version was better because it brought up the question of choices and long-term consequences of those choices. A few students were disturbed that, even in literature, a character would think of sacrificing her immortal soul for love, adding that no one was worth that sacrifice.

We used a video, primarily intended for entertainment, as a beginning point for a unit of study that encompassed a large number of literary skills, vocabulary development skills, grammar and writing skills, and higher order thinking skills. Both the students and I were pleased with this very productive break in routine.

Barbara Brookshire, Bristol, Tennessee School District (retired).

This article was adapted and reprinted with permission from the Tennessee English Journal (October 1995), a publication of the Tennessee Council of Teachers of English, an affiliate of NCTE. Visit http://www.tncte.org/professional.html.