Studies show that film incorporated into the curriculum can help to significantly improve literacy. Most recently the ‘Leeds Partnership Project: Improving Literacy Through Film (2014/15)’ recorded a 96% improvement in average points’ progress in reading, and a 60% improvement in average points’ progress in writing, in pupils regularly engaged with film watching and filmmaking. To learn about the techniques used to raise literacy attainment teachers can now sign up for a new free online course – Teaching Literacy Through Film - at https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-literacy-through-film/1
Created by the education charity Into Film in partnership with the BFI, and available on social learning platform FutureLearn, the course - the first of its kind in teaching literacy through film – will start on January 25th and run over four weeks.
Participants will develop a variety of techniques and strategies to enable them to confidently use film in the curriculum to raise attainment in literacy. A key aspect involves finding out how to use film as text to develop learners’ critical thinking, analytical and contextualisaton skills, with an introduction to the concepts of colour, character, camera, story, setting and sound – the 3Cs and 3Ss – and how learners can use these to analyse and decode film and other texts.
By interacting on the FutureLearn platform, course participants will be able to ask questions and share best practice and experiences with each other, as well as the experts leading the course. In addition, they will gain access to a number of educational resources to use in their own classrooms, including easily downloadable PDFs, classroom-ready film clips and activities. Other resources available to learners include:
- ‘Role on the Wall’ activity PDF to support character analysis within a film
- ‘How to’ guides to simple filmmaking in the classroom
- Links out to useful, interesting and well researched resources that directly support the literacy curriculum
- A summary of 20 ways to link filmmaking to literacy
On completing the course educators will have the opportunity to follow up with additional face to face CPD training from Into Film practitioners, enabling it to be used as part of a school’s CPD strategy.
Educators and youth leaders can register now for the Teaching Literacy Through Film MOOC at https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/teaching-literacy-through-film/
