Using This Guide

Welcome to the Film Guide for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone website!

“About the Film Guide Concept”

The concept of the motion picture study guide used here is taken from those developed by The Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) and more recently in the United States by Walden Media. The approach is also consistent with the series, Film Clips for Character Education, sponsored by The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (www.filmclipsonline.com). Appalachian State University has pioneered this work in the U.S. and our curricular work with movie guides has been featured in The Middle Ground and The Journal of Media Literacy among other publications.

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Using this Guide

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is an engaging and enjoyable film that has appeal to middle level learners while also being relevant to several areas of the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. Some subject areas addressed in the study guide include Common Core Standards of Language Arts, Social Studies, Health Education, and Theatre Arts. The guide is organized to clearly connect scenes to state standards. For example, connecting seventh grade Language Arts common core standard of Reading Literature CCS.ELA-Literacy.RL.7.7 where students apply methods of, “Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film.) This film guide also responds to some of the developmental dimensions of early adolescence described in Nation Middle Schools Association’s, This We Believe. Commonly face decisions that require more sophisticated cognitive and social-emotional skills. Prefer interaction with peers during learning activities. Believe that personal problems, feelings, and experiences are unique to themselves. Tend to be self-conscious and highly sensitive to personal criticism. Are psychologically vulnerable, because at no other stage in development are they more likely to encounter and be aware of so many differences between themselves and others. Have a strong need for approval and may be easily discouraged.


Using AIME:
Effective instructional strategies for teaching and learning with film will be accomplished through techniques of the AIME approach. In using film and other media in the classroom, research suggests that students learn more and are more engaged if:

View short scenes followed by activities.
Prompt students with pre-viewing or post-viewing cues, clues, or questions so that they have to look and listen activity during viewing. For examples they might be asked to make inferences about characters, or comment on how different media techniques contribute to the mood created in a scene. Students focus on dialogue as evidence of story structure and characters' personalities, motives, etc. Dialogue provides information and motivation and students should be able to select specific statements as evidence for their interpretations when working with key scenes.

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This technique is based on a concept called AIME, which was developed by Gavriel Salomon (1984). The term stands for the Amount of Invested Mental Energy or Effort. Salomon’s work proved that students engage in ‘shallow processing’ or ‘cognitive economy’ if they have not been told what to focus on during the viewing of a scene.When teachers preview a scene or clip ahead of time they are able to provide significant viewing guidance that results in higher student expectations, recall, and comprehension.

The movie Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone is based on the first novel in a series by J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series are fiction, but can also be instructionally purposeful. In the movie much of Harry Potter’s time is dedicated to learning something, whether it is how to produce a spell, how to fly a broom or building healthy relationships. For example, Harry comes face-to-face with Voldemort and his followers. Harry relies on his skill and the support of his friends in order to defeat them. Gaining knowledge and building healthy relationships is a key to survival in the real world and since it helps Harry defeat Voldemort educators can use this example to instruct students on the importance of building healthy relationships.