The original soundtrack of the films were composed by John Williams and the music is famous all over the world. Talking about music, it is important that students learn the best original soundtracks of the films of all the times with their respective authors. This is an opportunity to introduce the topic and show the learners the songs. This is the general song of the films:
Then, we have the term leitmotif, which is a phrase or melodic cell that signifies a character, place, plot
element, mood, idea, relationship or other specific part of the film. It
commonly is used in modern film scoring as a device for mentally
anchoring certain parts of a film to the soundtrack. Of chief importance
for a leitmotif is that it must be strong enough for a listener to
latch onto while being flexible enough to undergo variation and
development.
Darth Vader, one of the most influential characters of the films, has a well-know leitmotif, called The Imperial March. It is based on the well known Funeral March from Chopin's Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor and on Mars, the Bringer of War by Gustav Holst. Compare both of them is a great idea to amplify the musical knowledge of your students.This theme is so famous that the best orchrestras performed it. This is an example of it; the Prague Orchrestra playing the Imperial March. Students can watch the video and identify the different instruments which appear and classify them:
The characters of The Big Bang Theory are brilliant scientists reflected in the series as nerds. You can learn about some science stuff if you watch it, but before explaining the science activities, I have a proposal analising one of the characters, Sheldon. He is the cleverest of the group, excepcionally gifted. He posseses the Asperger Syndrome or disorder, an autist spectrum disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, limited empathy with peers and repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests.
This year is the 75th aniversary of our well-known hero of all the times, Superman. To celebrate it, you can make some funny activities with your students related to the environment and Geography. I am going to explain and develop some of them aimed at Primary Education:
Once your students are hooked by the Star Wars Universe, you can comment about some curiosities of the saga to make an interesting close of the unit. One of the most important merits of the films is that George Lucas was a pioneer and visionary of his times, introducing all the fantastic effects mixed with a lot lof topics. The special effects have improved amazingly and nowadays we are used to watch films in high quality with unthinkable effects but, do you know that in the first Star Wars film was only a scene maded by computer?
As a final task, the students can create a short film using the Windows Movie Maker that should be related to the topics they learned before, for example of the statement The end justifies the means, science fiction or something like that. You can celebrate at school an Oscars' Gala and aware prizes for the participants. Learners can also invent an object which doesn't exist and promote it creating and advertising with the same tool. That way you can organise the Gala into different categories.
Maybe your students don't know about Star Wars, so you can use the information I gave before as an introduction to the films. I chose the Star Wars Episode III: The revenge of the Sith. The first step is to watch the film in English, and if you consider that the learners don't have a good level to follow the film that way, you can put on the subtitles on their mother language to don't let them become frustrated or demotivated.
Doctor Who is famous for promoting the word instead of the war. He travels to all kind of planets and treats aliens and other criatures as equals evading racism and prejudices. The children can learn a lot of it and you can create exercises about multiculturalism, empathy and rol playing using this topic. I created an avatar that talks about it at 