The Astronomer's Sun - Film Literacy project - week 1

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

— Llanharan Yr 5/6 (@lps140club) January 9, 2019

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.

pic.twitter.com/EvNxcQ9ZSl

— Llanharan Yr 5/6 (@lps140club) January 9, 2019

 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.

Our second film literacy project session saw us make predictions of the film's name and trying to think about what the film would be about. @intofilm_edu @intofilm_cymru pic.twitter.com/qRhlDvu4zY

— Llanharan Yr 5/6 (@lps140club) January 10, 2019

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.