Lesson Plan: Zooming In!
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Rationale
Creative writing can encourage greater perceptive skills and increase students' abilities to articulate their experience; the work of journalist Ernie Pyle can serve as an excellent model.

Materials
Paper, pencil, (polaroid) camera, tape recorder, video camera

Methods
1. In Chapter 1 of "Men of Iron", Ernie Pyle describes the arrival of the Black Knight from a balcony [aerial] viewpoint. He also describes the view from first floor level, using the point of view of a young boy.

Your assignment: Focus on one area of the schoolground (playground, the gym, lunch room, the auditorium on an "event day") or piece of equipment. Choose a particular viewpointor line of vision (e.g. ground level, or aerial view.) Observe the area or the piece of equipment three times during a school day (e.g. morning, noon, after school) writing notes and drawing sketches about what you see, hear, smell, etc. Organize your observations (chronologically, or directionally - e.g. how does your view change from morning to afternoon?) Now, compose a three paragraph description of the area or the equipment.

2. Variations: (a) Videotape an area of the school yard or a piece of schoolyard equipment. Start from a wide-angle (3-shot). Now move or zoom in to a mid-shot (2-shot). Finally, make a close up (1-shot).

(b) Make a set of still pictures [polaroid, digital, 35-mm] of an area of the school yard or a piece of schoolyard equipment. (Distant, Mid-close up, Close up)

(c) Make three sketches of an area of the school yard or a piece of schoolyard equipment. (Distant/wide angle; mid; Close up)

(d) Make three 1-minute tape recordings in the school yard. Each successive recording should focus on a narrower perspective. (e.g. The entire gym with all its sounds; midway across the basketball court; right beside the basketball net when someone is shooting hoops.)

Compare your audiovisual work with the archival films from WWII (for example, newsreels or military documentaries) and/or with footage from contemporary newscasts on television. Why do you think these visual choices were made? What perspectives and camera angles do these different media emphasize, and what effect does this have on how you perceive the ideas being presented ?

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