"Immersion is felt by students in ways we don't even realize...we like that you watch and react to the video with us" (Burgess, 2012, Teach Like a Pirate). This video discussion guide will engage your students as you watch and react to the video with them. Dave Burgess, author of Teach Like a Pirate, believes that immersion is a way to "set your classrooom on fire" and this is what happened in my classroom with this discussion guide. Students were highly engaged in discussion throughout the video and it became a KEEPER year after year. I did not show the video in its entirety in one sitting. I usually showed it in segments over 10 to 15 days depending on the richness of the discussion (I allotted 30 minutes per day). At first the students weren't used to stopping a video to discuss let alone watching segments over several days. It quickly became the "norm" in my class that whenever we got the opportunity to watch a video it always had a purpose -- to enrich our thinking about a topic or connect it to our lives. The students learned to LOVE video discussions and the anticipation for watching and discussing was always very high. I LOVED this one in particular year after year (I used it with my 5th grade classes for at least 7 years before I moved to my current position in district office). It's great for helping students take the concepts and apply them to their own lives and build classroom community. I used this one in combination with "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
