Common Core Standards

Grade 7

Reading RL.7.7

Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).

It's all about technical differences for this standard—the actual critiquing of whether changes to the work's original plot were good or not goes to the eighth graders. While teaching this standard, it's a great time to talk about how the meaning of a work can change as it goes from print to some other visual medium. (Hint: the meaning of a work might change to the director's interpretation of it as opposed to that of the original author.)

Example 1

Here's a lesson to use when students compare an original text to its movie or theatrical counterpart. We like Seven Little Australians and The Sound of Music, but you can choose your own, too.

Have students read an excerpt from the original story of Seven Little Australians, which follows the storyline of the musical The Sound of Music. A focus on film techniques and audio (music) will be applied as well as an analytic look at how the original Von Trapp story was transformed into a musical.

Aligned Resources

Teacher Guides

Aristotle

The observed gravitational effect between Common Core activities results from their warping of Shmooptime.