Are your students “Star Wars” fanatics? Are you?
Not only has the new movie “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” shattered box-office records, it has also carried the franchise even deeper into popular culture, from the catwalk to the presidential campaigns. The force is strong.
If you are looking for ways to bring “Star Wars” into your classroom using some of the thousands of articles The Times has published since the first movie debuted in 1977, we offer teaching ideas for subjects across the curriculum — from analyzing Yoda’s syntax to investigating the economic consequences of destroying the Death Star.
Is “Star Wars” a part of your classroom? Tell us how you teach it.
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS: Tackle Shakespeare With Yoda, You Will
Yoda used a very recognizable and unique sentence structure when he communicated his wisdom. Standard English sentences typically follow a subject-verb-object order, but Yoda tended to use an object-subject-verb structure. Here are some examples:
For starters, students can analyze Yoda’s speech patterns on their own to see if they can discern any consistent rules. There are quote lists all over the web.
But, Yoda’s speech can serve as more than just a grammatical novelty in English classrooms. It can aid students in tackling the challenging syntax commonly found in both poetry and Shakespeare’s plays. If they can comprehend Yoda’s wisdom, they will be on their way to making sense of “King Lear.”
In Ethan Gilsdorf’s review of Ian Doescher’s book “William Shakespeare’s Tragedy of the Sith’s Revenge,” one installment in a series of best-selling “Star Wars”/Shakespeare mash-ups, he writes:
In “The Empire Strikes Back,” Yoda admonishes his apprentice, Luke Skywalker, saying, “Wars not make one great.” Later, in “Return of the Jedi,” he quips, “When 900 years old you reach, look as good you will not.” In case you didn’t catch on, Yoda inverts his syntax. In other words, Yoda practically speaks Shakespearean.
In fact, in Mr. Doescher’s series, every character, from Wookiees to droids, speaks Shakespearean.
Taking inspiration from Yoda and Mr. Doescher’s mash-ups, students can try “Shakespearifying” scenes from the “Star Wars” franchise — or from other popular films or TV shows.
HISTORY: Finding Echoes of the Past in Fiction
In “Studying How ‘Star Wars’ Mined History,” Noam Cohen writes:
The events in “Star Wars,” the opening credits reveal, happened “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” But did similar events happen before?
That is the question posed by “Star Wars and History.”
This book, written with the cooperation of George Lucas, is intended to “give fans an inside look at the real science, history and political science that informed ‘Star Wars.’ ” The historical influences span from Nazi Germany to Richard Nixon to the Roman Empire.
But, even without knowing or trying to guess Mr. Lucas’s inspiration, students can apply their knowledge of history to make connections between the fictional universe in “Star Wars” and actual past events.
When has a small army of rebels taken on a massive empire? Where have humans and other sentient beings been held in slavery? When have individuals made the choice to be bystanders, perpetrators or rescuers? What other echoes of world history do you see in the “Star Wars” saga? How?
SCIENCE: The Physics of Space Battles
Are explosions just a waste of energy in space? Would warships be sleek and snazzy, or would they just be spherical? These are some of the questions that Joseph Shoer ponders in his 2009 essay on the technology site Gizmodo.
In “The Physics of Space Battles,” The Times writes about the essay:
Shoer, a Ph.D. candidate in aerospace engineering, says any real space battles would likely have — yawn — “relatively long periods during which Newtonian physics govern the motions of dogfighting spacecraft, punctuated by relatively short periods of maneuvering.” That’s because spacecraft typically are sharply curtailed by the realities of propulsion and orbit dynamics – “not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets’ orbits.”
Of course, special effects in movies are designed to be dramatic. But to what extent do they defy physics?
Have students watch almost any battle scene in “Star Wars” and consider: Are the laws of physics being bent or ignored? How might reality differ from the fantasy depicted?
Students can repeat the same activity with other fantasy films or video games as well.
MATH: Creating Fractal Islands
The “Star Wars” series brings to life a fictional galaxy that continually expands in complexity as new lands are revealed in an evolving story line.
Students can imagine themselves as cartographers contributing to an atlas that maps the planets in the “Star Wars” universe. The site Star Wars in the Classroom includes a lesson plan (PDF) outlining a creative geography unit that guides students through doing just that.
To incorporate math into this activity, students can generate fractal islands to represent a planet’s continents — a hands-on activity adapted from Dr. Chartier’s book “Math Bytes: Google Bombs, Chocolate-Covered Pi, and Other Cool Bits in Computing.”
Students can make these continents by hand using a pencil, paper and two dice. (We will assume one die is red and the other blue, although you could just roll twice.)
To start, begin with a square. It’s endpoints are at (0,0), (0,16), (16,0) and (16,16). Now, follow these steps, for each of the four line segments:
- Roll the dice.
- If the red die equals 1 to 3, you’ll move the line’s midpoint by 2 units. If the blue die equals 1-3, you’ll move in the positive direction, else the negative.
- If the red die equals 4 to 6, you’ll move the line’s midpoint by 4 units. If the blue die equals 1-3, you’ll move in the positive direction, else the negative.
- Repeat this step, but now moving the y-value of your new point.
Here are different shapes generated by this activity:
Can’t imagine these shapes appearing as masses of land on distant planets? To add sophistication to the end product, students can use a computer.
Rather than moving points by 2 or 4, students can pick a random value between -7/10 and 7/10. Given they are using a computer, they can repeat the step, but now let the midpoint of each line segment vary by a random amount chosen from an interval half the size of the last step’s interval. They can do this as many times as they like, although eventually, they’ll see very little visual difference between iterates. Students can try this process with this applet.
As they iterate, students are creating a fractal island — or a newly revealed continent on a distant planet in a galaxy far, far away.
ECONOMICS: The Death Star, Too Big to Fail?
Ever think about the economy of “Star Wars”? Not the nominal versus inflation-adjusted performance of the latest “Star Wars” film, though that’s interesting too. But, the actual economy of the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire and the entire “Star Wars” galaxy?
In the article “In ‘Star Wars,’ Was the Death Star Too Big to Fail?”, Zachary Feinstein writes:
At the end of “Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi,” the heroic Rebel Alliance defeats the evil Galactic Empire, destroying the second Death Star, the empire’s central space station (and superweapon). Audiences typically respond to the destruction of the Death Star with triumphant cheers.
But over the years, a number of perhaps more reflective fans have paused to question the consequences of this event. In his movie “Clerks,” for example, the writer and director Kevin Smith has his protagonists debate the ethics of destroying the second Death Star, whose construction was still underway, given the collateral damage to the contractors (“plumbers, aluminum siders, roofers”) building it.
As a financial engineer, I have another concern: the economic repercussions for the “Star Wars” galaxy. In a recent working paper, I brought the analysis of financial systemic risk to bear on this question. I found that the resulting financial crisis would cause a serious galactic depression of astronomical proportions — so large, in fact, that it suggests the rebel victory might have been a pyrrhic one.
Students can read through Dr. Feinstein’s economic analysis and offer their critique. Do they accept his assumptions? Does his conclusion make sense? And, does his “Star Wars” investigation help to make the case for continuing to study how to model financial contagion and measure systemic risk?
ART: Take a Selfie, Create a New “Star Wars” Character
Students might be surprised to learn that the character Yoda was essentially modeled after its creator’s own face.
Monte Reel writes in “Stuart Freeborn: The Makeup Artist Who Became Yoda,”
Stuart Freeborn built his reputation by staring deep into the faces of others, defining their best features and digging into his makeup kit to make sure everyone else noticed them, too. He learned how to accentuate a cheekbone from none other than Marlene Dietrich. The arch in Vivien Leigh’s eyebrow owed some of its impish charm to him. But decades into his career, when George Lucas asked him to create a centuries-old Jedi master, Freeborn took a long look at a face that he had never considered with much professional interest: His own. The character of Yoda would become a fun-house distortion of Freeborn’s own reflection.
The article continues:
In the mirror, Freeborn could examine the contours of the crown of his skull, fully exposed by a hairline that completed a retreat years before. Freeborn etched deep wrinkles into Yoda’s bald scalp that were exaggerated replicas of the lines that creased his own forehead when, for example, he zeroed in on the tight-focus particulars of Yoda’s physiognomy. The pointed chin, the compact nose and the thin, pursed lips all made the leap from the mirror to the model. The only feature he borrowed from someone else was the upper lip: It was a hairless version of Albert Einstein’s, Freeborn said. He hoped that it might trigger a subconscious association and that viewers might intuit Yoda’s extraordinary intelligence.
Inspired by Mr. Freeborn’s creation, students can design their own “fun-house distortion” of their reflection or selfie. Together, the class can assemble a new cast of characters for the not-yet-released “Star Wars” films.
JOURNALISM: “Star Wars” in The New York Times
— NYT Archives (@NYTArchives) May 4, 2015
Last year on May 4, or “Star Wars Day,” The Learning Network, with help from the @NYTarchives Twitter account, rounded up early Times reporting on the films, the fans and the meaning of “Star Wars” in our culture.
As we suggested then, try searching “Star Wars” in The Times and you’ll come up with all kinds of interesting things — from thoughtful personal essays to videos of “Star Wars”-themed pranks. Use them as models for your own essays or reviews, or as inspiration for other “Star Wars”-themed journalism projects for your school or community newspaper.
Here are but a few. What can you find?
2015 | ‘Star Wars,’ Elvis and Me
“Anything could have defined my generation, but it happened to be Luke, lightsabers and the Force,” writes A.O. Scott.
2015 | A ‘Star Wars’-Themed Plane Will Take to the Skies This Fall
Just one in “an endless series of product placement partnerships” to appear in 2015, reports Rachel Lee Harris.
2010 | ‘Don’t Act So Surprised, Your Highness’: ‘Star Wars’ on the Subway
Pranksters at Improv Everywhere act out a scene from “Star Wars” on the No. 6 subway train.
2005 | Special ‘Star Wars’ Times Section
Published as “Revenge of the Sith” was released, this section features reviews, articles, an interactive graphic and more.
1997 | ‘Star Wars’ Salutes a Brave Old World
“The coming of ‘Star Wars’ brought a galactic change in scale, turning the movie industry into a version of the film’s crowded bar, with strange critters and aliens duking it out for big stakes,” writes Edward Rothstein.
1977 | ‘Star Wars’ — A Trip to a Far Galaxy That’s Fun and Funny (PDF) Vincent Canby reviews “Star Wars.”
1976 | From ‘American Graffiti’ to Outer Space (PDF) The Times talks to George Lucas before the release of the first film.
A Brief History of the Star Wars Universe. Published in The New York Times, 2005. pic.twitter.com/HWnnj8jqpe
— NYT Archives (@NYTArchives) December 18, 2015
More Resources From Around the Web
“Star Wars” (1977) Original Trailer
Ours are, of course, just a few of many ideas for teaching and learning with “Star Wars” that have been suggested since the films were first released. You can find many more at these sites:
How have you brought “Star Wars” into your classroom? Share your ideas in the comments section.
This resource may be used to address the academic standards listed below.