Lights, camera, language

They say that one of the tenets of good writing is the ability to show instead of tell.

The seventh and eighth grade students at Sacred Heart Catholic School are learning new ways to do that with the help of Wisconsin’s Public Broadcasting System.

The students are learning all about video composition and the writing that’s necessary to work in that field. The students met with PBS producers via Zoom to learn the basics, like setting up microphones, preparing lighting and more.

“There’s a program through PBS where we’re able to use a lot of their professional equipment,” said Mallory Kruszynski, who teaches middle school English. “We have lights, camera, microphones, and we’re doing media and video composition. We’re learning language arts.”

Now, the students are working on a class podcast, where they will have to create a question that is answered in the community. After that, there will be a research project where students will put together a news story about how the coronavirus has affected the community. Once that is done, they will be making creative films with students writing scripts and acting them out on the screen.

“This goes hand in hand with the writing process,” Kruszynski said. “The planning, the producing, the editing — we’re learning all those steps through podcasts. We’re going to do some documentaries. We’re going to do some creative writing and short films and that kind of stuff.”

The students will be deciding many of the topics that they will tackle through video composition, according to Kruszynski. They spent a couple of afternoons recently brainstorming what they want to talk about for the podcast, which will be submitted to National Public Radio’s Podcast Challenge for middle and high school students.

The documentary regarding the coronavirus is expected to take a little more work.

“We talked about the coronavirus, and how that’s affecting the people closest to us and the community,” Kruszynski said. “They’re going to be involved in writing all the scripts, and then they’re going to take from the scripts to record everything, and then they’ll be in charge of the editing, as well.”

Kruszynski first learned of the PBS video composition program two years of ago at a conference in Madison.

“They gave us the rundown on audio and video and all that stuff, and then we got a day to go out in Madison with their equipment and practice and put together some little videos,” Kruszynski said. “We got the hands-on experience that we could take back to our classrooms.”

The lending of the video equipment by PBS is something new this year, she noted. It’s a chance for students to learn hands-on and to find a way to make writing fun.

“The goal is to have students excited about the learning process, and it teaches them a lot more than just how to use a camera or how to set up a tripod,” Kruszynski said. “They learn how to collaborate and how to work with each other.”

Even though the projects are still in the formative stages, Kruszynski is seeing the excitement in the students as they figure out where to go next.

“We’ve already had to do some troubleshooting. We had a microphone that didn’t work,” Kruszynski said. “That’s always a good thing for them to learn. Sometimes technology doesn’t want to work, and we have to figure out the next option. It’s good for them to work through those kinds of problems, too.”

For Swede Corn, a seventh grade student at Sacred Heart, he’s excited at the prospects of not only the fun that can come from video composition, but how it can help him become a better writer.

“We’re learning about how to communicate and about how to use equipment that is used by other television programs or any type of program that uses microphones and cameras,” Corn said.

Video production has a lot more allure for Corn than being asked to simply write about something.

“This helps us take more of our experience and more intelligence and help us take our time,” he said. “It’ll help our brains exercise and keep our brains moving.”

Despite the allure of the cameras and the other equipment, Corn acknowledged there’s still a writing element that’s necessary to make things work, and that’s fine with him.

“We might need scripts for what we’re going to do,” Corn said. “When we make a podcast, we need to know what we’re going to say.”

Kruszynski said she is confident that, given the choice between writing a report and producing a video, they’d pick the latter.

“A lot of times with traditional language arts, they’re sitting at their desk. They’re filling out a worksheet. They’re typing on a Chromebook, and then they hit ‘submit’ and that’s it,” Kruszynski said. “In the video process, they’re working in small groups all the time, and they’re talking and exchanging ideas a lot more. They’re getting to use technology and equipment that they otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to use. They get to be a little more creative.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com