Idea from Observing

While doing my observations, my cooperating teacher introduced a very interesting technique that I thought would be helpful. To introduce dialogue, my cooperating teacher showed his students a short clip from a film. After viewing the short clip, the teacher handed out a blank script. This handout had the name of the characters talking, but that was it. The students were told that they would be filling in this script after viewing it again. Students were also told to not only include the dialogue used in the clip, but also the mannerisms that were made by the actors.
I thought that this was a great way to introduce students to how to write dialogue. Instead of showing examples from a story that has several examples of dialogue, the teacher showed a clip and allowed the students write down the dialogue themselves. I thought that this would be a great introduction to writing short stories that will use dialogue to speed up the text. Another reason why I really liked this idea is because I think students sometimes react better to films than books. A lot of students hate the thought of reading, and by telling the students to read an example from a book, the teacher may automatically turn the student off of the assignment at hand.