A couple of weeks ago, I read a blog post about using short Pixar animated videos to teach problem solving written by Speech Pathologist, Sarah Wu. The idea intrigued me because this type of activity forces students to use their own language in order to answer questions and retell events. Summarization is a skill needed in all content areas, not just Language Arts. I think that by not providing a word bank or piece of text that they can refer back to increases the level of critical thinking on the part of the student. You can also take this opportunity to teach them about utilizing online tools such as a thesaurus. KidThesaurus.com is kid friendly and doesn’t fill the screen with a whole bunch of adds.

Click here if you would like to make a copy of the lesson.