Author Karen Filewych leads a class at J.J. Nearing through a lesson on literacy.
“Today we’re going to read about elephants,” she says pulling an article about one up on the room’s electronic whiteboard.
Soon she and the students are reading through facts on elephants: their size, special features, and habitat. There are four camera operators filming their every move, but the students seem too interested in elephants to notice.
“Elephants eat grass, twigs, and branches,” they chorus, reading the article, and spend most of their day eating.
“Can you imagine if you spent all day eating?” asked Filewych, to a smattering of giggles.
“You’d be as big as that elephant!”
Filewych was guest instructor for teacher Laura LeMay’s Grade 5 class at J.J. Nearing Catholic Elementary last May 30. The author was there with a film crew to tape an educational video for Pearson Canada, guest-starring the students.
Filewych wrote a new literacy module for Pearson Canada and needed students to help film a training video, LeMay said. A Pearson employee has a daughter in LeMay’s class and suggested her class help out with the video. After getting the go-ahead from principal Shelby Moser, Filewych and her crew started filming.
LeMay said Filewych visited her class the week before to explain what they would be doing.
“There were a lot of questions about the Oilers,” LeMay said, as the cameramen typically film shoot Edmonton Oilers games.
LeMay said the class spent the morning of May 30 filming the video. The students had to rearrange their desks for the shoot and had microphones disguised as pencil boxes on their desks to capture sound. Students were not allowed to wear any hats or shirts with logos on set and were told not look at any of the cameras. Filewych followed a script, while the students improvised their responses.
LeMay said the toughest part of the day for the students was likely the group work segment, where the cameras focused on a group of four students doing an activity while everyone else was working quietly.
“It was almost 40 minutes of them having to sit quite still,” she said, with no bathroom breaks or other interruptions.
Filewych said the module itself is meant to support teachers working with struggling readers in Grades 4 and up.
“[Literacy] is the foundation of everything else,” she said, and if students aren’t fluent in reading early on, they will struggle in later grades.
Filewych said the module (dubbed Literary Success Foundations) has teachers teach students a series of lessons on phonics and reading comprehension. The training video will show teachers how the lessons should go.
While they didn’t get any acting credits for their roles, Filewych said the students did get a pizza party once the shoot wrapped up. The school will also get a free copy of the finished module once it’s ready later this year.
LeMay said her students will likely hold a watch party of the finished videos this fall.
“I’m sure they won’t be listening to the actual content. They’ll just be excited to see themselves onscreen.”
