Using Digital Media To Help Children Understand "Respect"

According to Howard Gardner, one of the best ways to teach respect is to have children work in heterogenous groups on common projects, get to know each other first-hand, and learn that viewpoints may be different, but that doesn’t make them wrong (Gardner, 2007). Once a foundation of authentic respect exists within a classroom, content learning can begin and flourish. 

To help my new class of third graders develop a working understanding of respect, we will begin the school year with a digital media project. This will serve a two-fold purpose: first, to set the tone and expectation that our class will be an oasis of respect; second, the help assess and build media skills the students will use on upcoming project-based learning products. 

This exploration of respect will take one week and begin on the first full week of school.

We’ll open with a quick discussion of what the kids know about the word “respect.” We will connect it to our school “Wrangler Code,” The Six C’s: Character, Collaboration, Creativity, Community, Caring, and Critical Thinking. The students will form six groups of 4 children...each group assigned one of the “Six C’s.” The teams will brainstorm some ideas they have about how the word “respect” can apply to their particular “C.” After a brief classroom discussion, we will watch the Discovery Education film, Getting in Character: Respect. Each student will watch for examples of “respect” that will fit their “C” and take notes or draw pictures to help them remember the content of the film.

From this initial exploration of the concept of “respect,” we will transition to small group work (“C” Teams) to develop screenplays and scripts similar to those shown in Getting in Character. Once screenplays and scripts are completed and rehearsed, the students will record their movies on iPads. Completed movies will be transferred to iMovie, where a class “Respect Film” will be compiled. We will publish this film to a class wiki we design specifically to chronicle the year’s learnings and activities. This film will be our “first installment.”

Permanently posting the class film to our wiki will give us an archive we can return to and update as we need to over time. No doubt, circumstances and familiarity will give rise to conflicts and less-than-respectful behavior throughout the school year...we will already have a product and routine in place for revisiting our conversation about respect...creating new films (and practicing our digital editing skills) as we need to along the way. Discovery Education has several appropriate videos and video segments that deal with diversity, respect, and other ethical issues. Observing other students deal with these issues in video will help younger students realize that “respect” is a universal value everyone struggles with occasionally, and that truly respectful people work in positive ways to resolve these struggles. 

Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Video Dialog (Producer).  (1998). Getting in Character: Respect. [Full Video].  Available from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/