Kids on Film: Teaching Documentary in the English Classroom

Far from the dry, didactic texts they are sometimes dismissed as, documentaries have the power to engage teenagers in a way that most other media don't, as the form increasingly overlaps with young people's own documentation and presentation of life via social media. Louise Lavery outlines a unit she developed and executed that resulted in her Year 9 English students understanding, and wholly embracing, nonfiction cinema.

Additional keywords: Screens in the Classroom, middle years, flipped learning, The Boy Who'll Never Grow Up, Grey Gardens, Super Size Me, Blackfish, Sherpa, That Sugar Film, 9/11: The Falling Man, Bully