ITVS Community Classroom lesson plans pair educational film modules drawn from ITVS’s acclaimed documentary films with standards-based lesson plans, activities, and other interactive content.
Lesson Plans
 | "Keep Coming": How to Strengthen ResiliencyThis lesson highlights the qualities of resiliency needed by teens to overcome adversity and risk. Students consider their own level of resiliency and explore ways to strengthen it. From the Women and Girls Lead, Vol. 3: Women, Girls, & the Criminal Justice System Classroom collection |
 | Alternatives to "Zero Tolerance" School Discipline Policies: Working Through Official ChannelsStudents will examine how school discipline policies that rely heavily on suspension and expulsion can be an obstacle to student success and explore alternatives, especially peer juries, conflict management, and other youth empowerment models. From the The Graduates: Youth Action Guide Classroom collection |
 | Art and TransformationStudents will be introduced to Brazilian visual artist Vik Muniz and the motivation behind his art project “Pictures of Garbage.” They will also meet some of the residents and works of the world’s largest landfill, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They will explore the artist’s responsibility to the communities s/he represents. From the Women and Girls Lead, Volume 1 Classroom collection |
 | BeholderThis film is set in a future where technology has allowed for everyone living in a fictional gated community to pick and choose all of the genetic features of their children before they are born. Students will contemplate how far they are willing to go to defend their own beliefs. From the FUTURESTATES Classroom collection |
 | Benazir Bhutto and the Struggle for Democracy in PakistanStudents will investigate Pakistan’s struggle to maintain a lasting democratic government, and look at various experiences in Benazir Bhutto’s life that shaped her as a leader. From the Women and Girls Lead, Volume 1 Classroom collection |
 | Benazir Bhutto: First Woman Leader of a Muslim NationStudents will study the context in which Benazir Bhutto became the first woman leader of a Muslim nation, and the complexities of being a female leader in a Muslim country. From the Women and Girls Lead, Volume 1 Classroom collection |
 | Building a Story Within a StoryThis lesson focuses on the narrative technique of frame story. Students analyze its structure, and in extension activities write their own frame stories and research real tent cities. From the FUTURESTATES Classroom collection |
 | Bullying: The ArtsStudents will look at how bullying can be an obstacle to Latino youth, especially with regards to immigrant, undocumented, racial, socioeconomic, and LGBTQ groups. They will explore how the arts can be a powerful way to bring different voices into dialogue, and how they can be tools for increasing self-esteem and combating stereotypes and negative images. From the The Graduates: Youth Action Guide Classroom collection |
 | Can You Own a Sound?The basic foundations of copyright law and how the music industry began to respond legally to sampling as hip-hop grew in popularity in the 1990s. From the Copyright Criminals Classroom collection |
 | Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Causes and ImpactIn this lesson, students will make personal connections with a family that has been traumatized and displaced by conflict in their homeland, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DR Congo. Doing so will help put a human face on a far away and unimaginable conflict that is the deadliest since World War II. Students will then investigate various events in DR Congo’s history, determine the causes and impact of the war, and analyze the effects that war has had on women in particular. (includes 2 film modules) From the Women and Girls Lead, Volume 1 Classroom collection |
