Showing your students a film can today be a bit controversial. Should students watch film in school? Why or why not? I believe that if you use film or film clips in the right way it can be very beneficial and an easy tool to teach the students about themes, setting, plot, characters and so on. You can of course teach this through reading but sometimes it cna be nice both for students and for teachers to do something else in a new way, maybe something you haven't tried before. When using film in the classroom you have to make sure that the students don't only see the film but that they read it. There is a difference in seeing and reading and your job is to teach them how to read film.

To be able to read film the students need to watch actively and not only watching the film as entertainment. You can do this by forcing them to take notes or answering questions at the same time as they are watching. You can also choose to only use extracts instead of whole films since time is often a problem when it comes to film. However, you have to think about copyright and make sure you follow the rules when using extracts.

I believe it might be easier to teach the students about setting, plot, characters and so forth by using film since it is portrayed in a different way in films than it is in books. I don't mean that you use film instead of books but as a complement to books. It is sometimes easier to understand what you can see through examples than by reading about something.