My kids finished reading Tuesdays with Morrie! Yay! To complete the unit, I wanted the students to watch the movie and to compare the book and the movie–understanding literature through multiple lenses.
Today and tomorrow (Thursday and Friday) are my last days at Mason City High School–I can’t believe it! To close out my time with my students, I collected their Final Papers then introduced the movie activity.
Watching movies in class, especially in high school, isn’t always looked at fondly. However, I thought this movie would be a good idea because it helped the students to connect to the book through a different source and the activity matched the standard: Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums [CCSS.ELA.Literacy.RL.0-10.7], which I felt was important.
To make the movie activity even more relevant, I gave the students a worksheet that compared and contrasted the book and the movie. This was the general concept behind it: 
I used this as a model for the worksheet, though the worksheet was a lot more advanced and asked the students, in chart form, to compare and contrast.
I think this chart was helpful. My cooperating teacher will go over it with the students on Monday, so hopefully it serves as a good discussion tool! Overall, connecting movies and literature can be helpful for students to see similarities and differences. Plus the movie version of Tuesdays with Morrie is so emotional and powerful! I hope my kids enjoy it!