We held an information gathering scavenger hunt in our classroom, looking for evidence to prove whether the moon landing was real or fake.
Evidence cards were hidden around the classroom for pupils to explore. They then recorded the information from the card and formed opinions on what it told them.
Finally, they had to come up with their opinion on whether they thought they had enough evidence to declare whether they think that it was real or fake.
Our 4th week of our Film Literacy project started off with our pupils revising their instructional writing by coming up with a set of instructions on using the magic machine. We developed our success criteria by watching some of the instructional videos our class made last year (an example can be found by clicking HERE).
We then moved onto trying to get into the character's heads by writing a role on the wall. We tried to think about what the Astronomer's Sun's son would be thinking throughout the film, which we wrote in his head. In his body, we added the emotion words which he would be feeling. Around the outside, we wrote what the perceptions of others' would be of the man.
Today we used the cropping tool on Explain Everything to add ourselves into screen-caps from the film. We then thought of questions we would ask the characters in the film, and the responses they would give.
Our third week of our Film Literacy project saw the pupils watch The Astronomer' Sun all the way for the first time.
We then talked about how, if the two characters had the chance to talk to each other, what would they say. The pupils used www.classtools.net SMS generator to create a text conversation in pairs. Here are some examples.
The next day, we tried to get into the head of the bear in the film by completing a feeling's graph. This enabled us to track the character's emotions throughout the story.
Our second week saw us continuing our predictions into what the story of the film was. We still have yet to watch the entire film!
We started off by watching about 2/3's of the film, up until a crucial point whereby one of the characters had a dilemma posed to them. We discussed possible decisions the character could make in the film. We looked at a decision wheel and how they work. Pupils then came up with possible solutions to the dilemma and then gave as many positive and negative consequences to these decisions that they could think of.
The following day we expanded upon these thoughts and discussed what a balanced argument was. We came up with a criteria for what needs to be used and began planning our debates.
Next the pupils began writing their balanced arguments:
Who knows, next week we may even watch the entire film!
This week, we kicked off our new film literacy project, following the same activities and teaching principles as what I worked on in the Into Film Cymru Film Literacy pilot project on the Girl and the Fox.
We kicked off Day 1 of the topic with a sound on/vision off activity, where the pupils were played 1 minute 23 seconds of the new film, with just the audio playing. A discussion was then had on what we think the film could be about. The pupils then were then split into groups focusing on Character, Setting, Action and Story. We listened to the audio again and then the pupils, in their groups, added predictions and thoughts to group specific Padlet pages.
Our padlets looking at story, setting, character and action along with one for our fronted adverbial sentences inspired by the writing. pic.twitter.com/cSYVWlz8R1
We then had a discussion on fronted adverbials (which we had been working on in class). Using their predictions, the pupils worked in pairs to write fronted adverbials on a new Padlet page.
Day 2 saw us look at more predictions. This time we watched a trailer for the film, which was stopped before the title was revealed. A discussion was had on what we think the film was about, and what it was called. The pupils were then given a hangman grid and jumbled up letters from the title to try to work out the title.
We watched the full trailer and revealed the title of our short film - The Astronomer's Sun. Using the same four topic points - Character, Setting, Action and Story - the pupils worked in groups to complete a Tell Me grid with more predictions. These then fed into a plan for pupils to write their own predictions of what they think the film will be about.
Day 3 saw the pupils being introduced to 20 randomly ordered screencaps from the film. The pupils had to arrange them in what they thought was the correct order and choose their four favourites. They worked in pairs and used Explain Everything to upload the images in order and write sentences to explain the story.
