Film Literacy- Raising Standards in Literacy

We looked at various aspects of film and non fiction in this, our latest training day. I shared Tasty.co as a great site for instructional films based on recipes.

We used iMovie to create our own instructional films that featured lots of the techniques used in the Tasty videos. Here are some examples.

We learnt how to use filming techniques in interviews using approaching shots, green screening and cutaways. Cutaways are one of the hardest things we ask children to do. Here Philip drones on excites us all with his tale of breaking a seat at Elland Road whilst Shannele struggles to stay awake. This type of shot would actually be used to cut away from the speaker to add variety and to join different shots of the speaker together. In news reports we often see a nodding reporter or a close up of scribbling on a notepad.

Into Film and our partner organisations, Nerve Belfast, Curriculum Innovation and Philip Webb Literacy in Bradford, and Bristol, City of Film, are proposing an exciting new 3-year film literacy and cross-curricular learning project for primary schools. All the details can be found in the flyer below. To download a copy of the flyer click here.

Schools can sign up by clicking on this link. 

Today we headed to the National Media and Science Museum in Bradford for the 2017 screening. We had schools from our key stage two film Literacy project and one school from our key stage one project took the chance to attend. This is the chance for the children in our project to watch their films on the big screen. It was clear to see how excited the children were as soon as they walked through the door and saw the screen. Flowery Field Primary travelled from Hyde and sent this tweet showing us how excited they were.

The cinema started to fill up…

…and we got started. Each school had the chance to stand on the stage and tell us about their films and the creative process.

Then it was showtime.

The children really enjoyed the day as can be seen in these tweets from Flowery Field Primary School.

We all had a great time and are looking forward to next year already.

In 2017-2018 we will be running a free Film Literacy training project in partnership with Into Film. The sessions will once again be delivered by Curriculum Innovation and Philip Webb, independent Literacy consultant.  There will be three CPD days for teachers with one day also including pupil training to become Film Literacy Leaders in your school. There will also be a case study writing and evaluation day.

We will be running an information session at our centre in Bradford on the 25th of May at 4 p.m If this is too far from your school for you to attend please contact me via email at tim.bleazard@theinnovationcentres.com You can sign up for the meeting via this link. The flyer below also contains for information.

This year any two form entry school will be able to join our Film Literacy project as part of a research project supported by Cape Uk, Into Film and the British Film Institute. This is for any school, not just those in the Bradford Local Authority. The project will enable year five teachers to embed the use of film English lessons.  This project is subsidised and the three training days for staff (with follow up consultancy) and one day for children will only cost £250.

More details are available in the flyer below. Please contact me if you have any questions.

The project is available to single form entry schools at a separate cost – all details can be found on our site here http://www.ticbradford.com/media-literacy This page also gives details of our key stage one project.

Trouble seeing the flyer? Click this link to view it.

The reading and writing levels are now in for all the schools that took part in the third year of the Bradford Media Literacy Project. The teachers and children achieved an average points score of 4.7  in writing and 4.28 for reading. These are the best levels we have ever had and also give us an average points score over the three years of the project of 4.28 in writing and 4.15 in reading. The expected progress over a school year is three points.

This provides firm evidence that the use of film can have a powerful impact upon reading and writing levels in primary school. We have also amassed over twenty five case studies detailing the impact the project has had in individual schools. These are on our case studies page.

Our project continues next year and details to sign up can be found here. The project is open to schools in Bradford and beyond.

You can now sign up for the fourth year of the Bradford Film Literacy project. This is open to schools in and beyond the Bradford Metropolitan area. We are holding a meeting at the Innovation Centre Bradford in Little Germany  on the 29th of June at 4pm where schools can find out more. We will share the impact of the project to date and what will be involved over the course of the year. You can download the flyer below and details of how to find the centre are here . For more information email Tim Bleazard or phone 01274 434818