Travelling and yet at home
Subha Das Mollick
Going on a trip is an immensely educative experience. New sights and sounds expand the mental horizon of the child. The next best thing is watching a movie because a movie can transport the spectator across space and time in the blink of an eye. And if the movie is about travel, then the experience of the journey becomes a part of the movie viewing experience. However, one may argue that virtual travel in the comfort of a movie hall can never be equivalent to the real experience of the toil and sweat, of the dust road bumps. But a well-designed lesson plan on a movie clipping can bring back some of the sweat and toil of the real journey at a cerebral if not the physical level. This article discusses how clippings of the animation film Up may be used in class to give an enjoyable, participatory learning experience to the students.
The lure of distant lands takes us out of the comfort of our homes. We embark on a journey to the unknown. Some travel on foot while some travel in ocean liners. Some fly over oceans and a few cross hills and dales on their bicycles.
The journey is always as exciting as your destination and how you reach your destination is an integral part of your travel experience. In the film Up, an old man Carl and his young companion Russel create a unique vehicle to embark on their trip to Paradise Falls in South America. In their long journey, they never leave their home. Their home gets buoyed up by thousands of colourful hydrogen balloons. Sitting in the comfort of their home they glide past windows of apartment houses, brush against TV antennae and rise up over the hills and towers. Carl puts out a sail to harness the power of the wind to steer them forward and sets his bearings using a compass. Carl sticks his head out of the window to catch the wind on his face and feels happy when his contraption rises far above the clouds. But suddenly young Russel spots danger lurking in the horizon. Carl’s home turned airship drifts into a dark, rain filled lightning cloud and everything turns topsy turvy. Russel manages to save himself from slipping into the void outside and Carl tries his best to save the memorabilia from falling on the ground and crashing. In his desperation to gain back stability, Carl cuts off a few strings and lets loose some of the balloons tethered to his home. Will they be able to get over this crisis and make it to Paradise Falls?
The journey of Carl and Russel can become an excellent teaching-learning material at different levels. This class may be conducted a couple of weeks before the onset of a vacation. The teacher may begin the class by asking students about their travel plans during the holidays. If the classroom is equipped with a smart board, the teacher can go online and ask the students to spot their holiday destinations on a Google map. If a smart board is not available, the same exercise can be done on an atlas. If the students pin their destinations on the atlas, the favourite travel destinations will be visible at a glance.
Next, the teacher can ask how the students plan to reach their destinations. Some will say ‘by train’ and some will say ‘by air’. The teacher can initiate a discussion as to which mode of transport is better – train or aeroplane. Then she can show some slides or pictures of other modes of commuting, like the bullock cart, ocean liner, bicycle and trekking. She can tell stories of Marco Polo and Huen Tsang who came to India on foot and also of persons who have toured the world on bicycles. If the classroom is equipped with a projector, she can make PowerPoint presentations of famous travellers from Marco Polo to Amy Johnson and beyond.
Finally the teacher can ask, “To reach your destination, you have to leave your home. Can you think of a way of reaching your destination without leaving your home?”
The students are likely to say “Yes. Watching a movie” or “Yes. When my grandmother tells me a story I am mentally transported to a far away land.” Some may even venture to say “Wearing virtual reality glasses I am transported to Egypt and Iceland.”
The teacher will reiterate, “I don’t mean virtual travel. I mean real travel.”
The students will scratch their heads.
At this juncture the teacher can introduce the characters of Up and screen a clipping of Up.
After the screening of a five minute clip, the teacher can initiate a discussion. The students will be brimming with questions:
How many balloons are required to lift up a whole house?
How come the balloons did not burst even though there was thunder and lightning?
Why did Carl put out the sails?
How high will the house rise?
Now the teacher can ask pointed questions like:
Where were Carl and Russel headed?
In which direction were they travelling?
What is the force that lifted up Carl’s house?
Why do you think Carl was cutting off some of the threads?
What was the height of the house above ground level when it drifted into the rain cloud?
Have you ever floated above the clouds?
Have you ever moved into a rain cloud?
Finally, the teacher will ask, “Do you think Carl and Russel will make it? Let’s watch the film a little more.”
In a 40 minute class, after all the interaction and altercation, there will be time to screen only a small part of the film. The film can be stopped at a critical juncture and continued in the next class.
For the interim period, the students may be given an assignment to find out whether there is really a place called Paradise Falls in South America. They may also find out about the flora and fauna that one is likely to encounter in the rain forests of South America.
In the next class, the teacher may begin by showing aerial views of the Amazon Rainforest in South America and asking, “If you glide down into this forest, what are you likely to encounter?” Those students who did their home assignment seriously would answer “jaguar” or “anaconda” or “poisonous frogs”. The teacher should have a PPT with the slides of all the animals the students mention and ideally a few more. This is perhaps the right time to speak about the biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest. The teacher may then steer the discussion to birds and is likely to get answers like “macaw”, “spectacled owl” and “parrot”. Then the teacher may announce, “We will now continue with our screening of Up and see what happens to Carl and Russel”. In this class she may screen the portion where Carl and Russel harness themselves to the still-buoyant house and begin to walk it across the mesa (tableland), hoping to reach the falls before the balloons deflate. On their way they encounter a huge colourful flightless bird, whom Russel christens Kevin.
The screening may be followed by a speculative discussion on Kevin’s familiarity with other birds and his special abilities.
Having taken a couple of classes using clippings of Up, on the last working day before the vacations, the students may be given the treat of viewing the entire film. As a vacation assignment the students may make a poster of the film.
The lessons discussed in this write-up may be fine-tuned and modified to suit students of classes 5, 6 or 7. The lessons may be linked to the geography and physics curriculum. The premise of Up hinges on the Archimedes Principle. Newton’s third law of motion may also be brought into discussion to explain the role of the sails.
The following points should be remembered whenever a lesson plan is designed using film clippings:
- The clipping should not be more than five to six minutes long.
- There has to be an introductory activity or discussion to arouse students’ curiosity on what they are going to watch.
- After the screening there should be a discussion.
- This discussion should proceed from simple questions to more thought-provoking questions.
- There should preferably be a small group activity after the discussion.
If the above pedagogy is followed, the child’s learning will be deep and lifelong. Some of the adventures of the real journey will brush off on the students while doing the activities given by the teacher.
The author is a filmmaker and a teacher of media science. She is also the secretary of Bichitra Pathshala, an organization committed to promoting learning with moving images. She may be reached at subha.dasmollick@gmail.com.
