I teach English across Key Stages 3-5, and I teach Film Studies at A Level. I try to create resources which are easy to use and which, for KS4 and 5 pupils, will aid their revision for exams. My resources tend to be word documents, so they can easily be adapted to suit your students' needs.
I teach English across Key Stages 3-5, and I teach Film Studies at A Level. I try to create resources which are easy to use and which, for KS4 and 5 pupils, will aid their revision for exams. My resources tend to be word documents, so they can easily be adapted to suit your students' needs.
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.
We don’t offer Film at GCSE at my school, but we do at A Level, so we have decided to include some short units in English in Years 9-11 to familiarise the pupils with the subject.
Here is what we will be doing with Year 9 for the last couple of weeks of the summer term.
The unit starts with the students researching the 5 elements of film which the Eduqas A Level covers: cinematography, mise-en-scene, sound, editing and performance.
They then explore a (totally non-violent) scene from early in 28 Days Later, using these new terms. This will take a couple of lessons.
There is then a longer section where the pupils explore the beach scene in Jaws in several different ways. This culminates in a task which could be a written piece, a group presentation or a podcast. It’s up to you.
The final section contains two silent clips from live action and animated movies. The students then create their own Foley sound for one of those clips.
All the clips the links needed are embedded into the ppt.
The PowerPoint SoW is accompanied by a 12 side pupil booklet they can use for making notes and writing their responses.
