For Educators

This lesson plan utilizes the film and POV's website resources for Food, Inc., a documentary that examines food in the United States and the industry that produces it. Classrooms can use these materials to explore the benefits and controversies of using genetically modified seeds.

In this lesson, students will study the role and status of women in Korea from the early 20th century to the present and determine how gender roles may have contributed to the hardships of successive generations of women shown in a series of video clips.

Students will use viewing skills, note-taking strategies and class discussion to determine the causes of Newark's 1967 urban rebellion and then to identify lessons learned and write about how those lessons could be applied toward positive changes in your community or state.

Students will have the opportunity to create written and visual profiles of their lives and reflect on issues of biography, identity and personal history.

This lesson will explore the interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem, identify what some private citizens are doing to protect endangered turtles, and discuss whether or not humans have an obligation to help endangered species. The related film The Chances of the World Changing chronicles the personal sacrifices and challenges faced by a New York writer who dedicates his time and resources to rescuing endangered turtles.

This lesson plan is designed to be used in conjunction with the film No More Tears Sister: An Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal. This 52-minute film recreates the struggles of human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, who remained in her war-torn homeland of Sri Lanka to expose human rights violations and to provide whatever level of stability that she could.

Students will have the opportunity to consider important issues such as how participation in civic and political life can help citizens attain individual and public goals and the importance of voting in a democracy.

The Fire Next Time explores what happens when free speech dissolves into hate speech. The hour-long documentary looks at a two-year period in the life of a dangerously divided town and shows how heated rhetoric can devolve into hate, intimidation, and violence.

This lesson provides students with an opportunity to explore and discuss issues of identity, stereotypes and diversity in our society/culture. Students will examine the impact intolerance has on groups in our society by hearing from people of small stature in the film and by examining their own self-identities and how they may have been influenced by society and external definitions.

This lesson plan incorporates the film and POV website resources of No Bigger Than a Minute, an eclectic documentary about filmmaker Delano's experience as a dwarf. Students will have the opportunity to learn more about how to analyzing messages conveyed in visual images, through studying Velázquez's beautiful paintings.