A unit which uses 'Kes' to develop students' knowledge of film form and their creative writing.

In my school, lower ability students only do Language at GCSE which leaves a little free time which we are starting to use to increase their media literacy, with the aim of increasing numbers for A Level Film Studies. This brief unit (which should only take a couple of weeks) builds on their existing knowledg of literary techniques, and uses extracts from ‘Kes’ to improve both their understanding of film and their creative writing.

It involves:

• revising and using common literary devices;
• exploring the 5 elements of film form (as contained in the Eduqas spec);
• an analysis of how character and setting are established in the opening scene;
• narrative writing based on the scenes where Billy trains Kes;
• descriptive writing about an animal of their choice.

It is written with Edexcel IGCSE Language students in mind, and is a great lead-in to the H is for Hawk Anthology extract. However, it could easily be adapted to suit any spec. It would also work well with bright Year 9s.