Today we briefly finished up Roman culture and then I showed them a clip from the movie, Ben Hur. I showed them the chariot race scene and I’ve never seen the students get so into a movie before. I asked them to simply watch the film, and try to analyze it as best as they could. The clip sparked conversations about Roman politics, religion, symbolism, and competitiveness. It was wonderful to see them so involved. I gave them each a worksheet that asked them to analyze the movie in three different ways: for drama, literary purposes, and for cinematic uses. They all filled in their sheets and we had a wonderful discussion about the movie on a number of different levels. The students critically thought about the movie and about the historical accuracy of it. It was a very effective technique that I will definitely use again.
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