Walking the Labyrinth: Getting Students Engaged with Literature via Commericials

Wanting to help out my team's ELA with the students practicing some literary analysis, I turned to Jon Corippo's Lit Circles: Rebooted for the 4 C's and Common Core. (See his slide share here.)

Corippo's approach focuses on short, engaging bursts of student activities and repetition. He encourages giving a time limit to students to make it like a game show and get their positive adrenaline pumping. Collaboration is also encouraged. With his lit circles approach he starts small and works toward student choice of reading material.

So, taking his lead, I started small like he suggests - with commercials. He uses those for the short bursts, to engage students, and to get in many repetitions so students can get more and more comfortable with their literacy skills.

His lit circles structure looks at four components: summarizing, conflict, characterization, and wishes (Wishes requires students to analyze and predict and to justify their responses, providing the ever-important "why".). You could change the components to stress skills you want your students to hone.

Different types of conflict for students to consider are presented in the
Google Drawing. (SmartBoard tells students which block to work on
based on where they sit in the group.)

I provided students with an overview and directions for each component. I decided each student would work on each component - you could structure that in different ways and organize small group conversations, but I wanted the group to see each others' work to expose them to others' ideas and have conversations as they did the work. So, I made a Google Drawing for each component. Students made copies, shared, and began their work.

But not until they started laughing while watching the commercial, of course.

I chose to use the Hyundai Kids Football commercial that aired during a Super Bowl. (You can see it here.)

Students were easily and quickly engaged.

As we talked about their work, they needed some tweaks here and there, but, hey, that's what practice is for. Overall, the task was accessible to a wide range of students, and the commercial made it seem far less like work.

I have since had them practice with the original Geico caveman commercial and the Doritos dog commercial from the 2016 Super Bowl. Both successfully engaged the students and had them practicing their literary analysis skills. It was also so easy to extend their thinking during discussion about concepts such as inciting incident and climax.

As the students got familiar with the format, they were able to complete the components more quickly, more accurately, and more insightfully. Practice allowed them to push their thinking more.

This approach is definitely one I will share with the ELA teachers in the building. It is engaging and flexible and allows students to practice essential skills - while having some fun, too!

If you have had success engaging students in literary analysis, or if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.