TV in the Classroom: 6 Episodes to Enrich Your ELA Curriculum
Trying to make “classic” texts relevant to modern teenagers is a big challenge we face as English teachers. If students aren’t interested in the text, how on earth are we going to get them to keep up with the reading, much less think deeply about it? Contrary to popular belief, we think there is a place for TV in the classroom. A well-selected episode of a TV show can be an excellent supplement to your ELA curriculum and help make a text or skill more accessible to your students.
One of our favorite ways to grab students’ interest is through contemporary television shows and movies. Visual storytelling, whether as entertainment or on social media, is a big part of our students’ world, and using these other “texts” can be an easy yet powerful way to bring students into the world of a novel or introduce a skill in a way that is non-threatening and high-interest.
Television episodes make a particularly great resource because they are short enough to fit within a class period. On YouTube, we shared our tips and tricks for finding the right episode, but here we wanted to share six of our tried and true favorites.
Bring It In: TV in the Classroom
#1 Psych: “Meat is Murder, But Murder is Also Murder” (Season 2, Episode 6)
In an effort to make Julius Caesar more engaging and relevant to our students, we created a crime report activity where students “investigate” Julius Caesar’s assassination and determine whether Brutus should be remembered throughout history as a traitor to the Roman republic or “the noblest Roman of them all.” We like to use this funny, lighthearted, easy-to-follow crime show to draw students in and introduce them to the vocabulary and skills they will need to be successful on the final project. It also makes a nice opening to the second semester, when students come back from Winter Break newly motivated to be successful.
#2 Modern Family: “Fizbo” (Season 1, Episode 9)
We used this episode to introduce students to plot and characterization. After watching the episode, students created a plot diagram and found examples of the different character types. In addition to being funny and school-appropriate, the episode is a great fit because the story is, helpfully, not told in chronological order, allowing us to bring in terms like suspense, flashback, and foreshadowing. This has always been one of our best examples of how using tv in the classroom can help enrich students’ learning.
#3 The Office: “Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
The Office is a tricky show to use in class: students love it, but many episodes include content we’re uncomfortable showing in class. While this episode still has a few cringy moments (that thankfully go over most students’ heads), we’ve found this episode to be a great way to introduce students to the types of irony and related terms like ambiguity, incongruity, and subtlety. We give students a list of quotations from the episode and ask them to identify the literary device. The activity is engaging for students and gives us common examples to draw on as we move through the unit.
#4 Community: “Modern Warfare” (Season 1, Episode 23)
In our AP Literature class, we needed to introduce a longer list of comedic techniques. This episode, a parody of action and war movies familiar to students, is full of examples of a broader range of comedic techniques. Students enjoy the episode, and as we introduce the terms, it’s helpful to have a common reference point (and there are only a few uncomfortable moments).
#5 Pride and Prejudice Miniseries, BBC (Episode 1)
When we first began teaching Pride and Prejudice, students struggled to understand the tone of the novel. Not only was the historical context unfamiliar, but because they weren’t picking up on the humor and irony, students struggled to care about the characters or the story. One year, we decided to try showing the first episode of the classic BBC miniseries in class before beginning the novel, and we found it made a big difference in setting students up to more successfully read the text on their own.
#6 The Daily Show
No longer hosted by Trevor Noah, The Daily Show is currently running with guest hosts, so whether you use a segment from a guest host, or cull the archives (read: YouTube) to find a particularly relevant topic from Noah’s tenure (or even Jon Stewart’s), clips from the show are a great way to introduce satire in AP Literature.
Satire is frequently misunderstood because it is not merely ridicule of human folly but ridicule for the purpose of reform. While it’s easy to find clips that make fun of human foolishness, it’s more difficult to find examples that are truly created with the intention of bringing about change. Because its creators have spoken publicly about their desire to bring a more balanced approach to American political discourse, these episodes serve as an accurate, timely, fun, and meaningful introduction to the genre.
TV in the classroom is one of several ways we work to engage students in ELA. If you’d like to hear more about our strategies for making old texts relevant and selecting a good television episode, check out our podcast episode, “How to Make an Old Text Relevant to Today’s Students,” and related YouTube video.