Watch the Method in Action
Free video lessons that show parents and educators how to turn media children already love into meaningful literacy conversations.
Start with a Complete Lesson Walkthrough
This featured lesson shows exactly how to move from watching a familiar scene to building a full literacy discussion — using the Learning Tree framework from start to finish.
Lessons Across Every Media Format
Every lesson focuses on a specific reading skill. Browse by category to find exactly what your students need.
Film & Story Structure
Use scenes from films children already know — Moana, Coco, Spider-Man, and more — to teach narrative arc, character development, and literary analysis.
Comics & Graphic Novels
Panel-by-panel analysis, visual inference, and dialogue study — close-reading skills that transfer directly to academic comprehension and standardized assessment.
Songs, Lyrics & Language
Lyric annotation, Could / Should / Would evaluation, and argument tracing applied to music — dense, layered texts that make analytical reading stick.
The Learning Tree Framework
Dedicated lessons on using WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW — and the deeper Could, Should, Would roots — with any text, at any grade level.
How to Use These Lessons
Each lesson is designed to stand alone or pair directly with a chapter from the book. Here's how to get the most out of every video.
Choose a familiar film, comic, song, or story
Start with something your students or child already knows and loves. The media is the entry point — the Learning Tree framework is what you build with it.
Watch the lesson and identify the literacy skill
Each video walks through a complete lesson: scene selection, Learning Tree analysis, discussion framework, and the specific literacy skill being developed.
Use the discussion prompts with your child or class
The Could, Should, and Would questions are ready to use with any scene. Download the free Quick Start Guide for the full prompt library and printable organizers.
The Full Opening Young Minds Library
The videos are one part of the system. Here are the resources that go alongside them.
Learning Beyond the Classroom
The complete 15-chapter framework for media-based literacy instruction. All the theory, method, and lesson plans — in depth. Available on Amazon in ebook and paperback.
Get the BookActivities & Organizers
Story Maps, Character Arc Charts, Lyric Annotation pages, Episode Journals — every printable tool from the book in one hands-on companion. Available on Amazon.
Get WorkbookQuick Start Guide
The full Learning Tree, a complete Moana lesson plan, reproducible organizers, and discussion prompts — free for every educator and parent. Use it Monday morning.
Download Free GuideThe Videos Are Part of the Same Mission
Every lesson in this library comes from the same place: the belief that the child who cannot sit still for a textbook is already doing something remarkable — absorbing stories, following plots, memorizing lyrics, reading the world around them at full capacity. The videos show educators and parents how to step inside that world and build the bridge from there to the academic literacy those children need.
It is not about making school feel like entertainment. It is about meeting children inside the media and stories they already love — and then doing serious, rigorous academic work with what you find there.
“I built this for the child who is waiting. And I built it for the educator who has not given up on finding them.”
— Carlos Menendez, Learning Beyond the Classroom
Start with one lesson.
Build the bridge from there.
Every lesson is free. Every tool is ready. All you need is a child, a story they love, and ten minutes.