This unit on Pixar’s short and SparkShort films is designed to focus on developing visual literacy skills and a holistic analysis of a work and body of work. The teacher may choose one (or more) Pixar shorts to use as a mentor text to teach elements of visual literacy, introduce new terminology, and set the bar for an expected level of analysis. You can find a list of Pixar’s Shorts and SparkShorts with a short summary of each on Pixar’s website.

The unit is designed to be a guided inquiry, where individual students (or groups of students) either choose or are assigned a Pixar short or SparkShort. Detailed questions are provided in the resources below to guide students through the analysis of the short. The difference between shorts and SparkShorts are summarized here.

Teaching Resources

A Note about the Resources

There are 3 assessments included in the resources:
1. The answers to the guiding questions
2. The student presentation (individual or group)
3. The written response
While the answers to the guiding questions are clearly formative, teachers may choose to make the presentation either formative or summative. The written response is the assessment that assesses the students’ ability to synthesize ideas and stylistic choices across the body of work, which is a more challenging task than analyzing an individual text. The final written response also holds students accountable for knowing, understanding, and analyzing the body of work, so that students are not awarded a mark for this unit based on one individual text.

Analysis Notes
These are some (rough) sample analysis notes on the Pixar short Lou that can be used for teachers and/or students to gain insight on the ways in which the analysis of a short can be approached.

SparkShorts

Many people are familiar with Pixar shorts, but SparkShorts are a new type of Pixar Short. To learn more, watch this video….

For a preview of the recently released collection, click below…

Photo by Michael Marais on Unsplash