Storytelling through the making of documentaries

Michelle Zheng
Diocesan Girls' School
Hong Kong SAR, China


Teaching students how to make documentaries is a powerful tool that can be used to showcase their views and opinions on the world around them. In this paper, the author draws on her experience as an English language teacher conducting a documentary-making exercise in a Secondary 2 classroom. Through this activity, several lessons were created which provided a very valuable learning experience for students, e.g.

In this process, students can not only learn the technical skills needed to create more documentaries, but also have to think more deeply about social issues and translate abstract concepts into digital form to increase the relevance of these issues.