That's A Wrap - Film making in Year 6

Normally my blog reflects on many things in my trainee teaching process however today I want to shout out about how impressed I am yet again with my Yr 6's. 

As most of you who read this blog will know, last week I taught the two classes how to make a storyboard for a suspense film,, delegate tasks in their groups of 6 and then film footage in their chosen locations across the school. This week the editing teams have been hard at work learning how to use the ULead Video editing software, and from what I have seen so far has proven that despite any ability in the so-called academic subjects, there are a lot of children who have the technical and creative minds to use a computer and assemble a 2-3 min film that all professional film makers would be chuffed with.

The lesson was very different from the usual IT learning because it is a new programme for the pupils to use. I hadn’t used it before so had to research into it and ensure I was confident in my own learning.

This work was done in small groups and based around Suspense story films. At the end of the lesson they could edit film footage by selecting scenes to crop or cut, crop and paste scenes to make it flow chronologically,

I asked a series of questions based around the technical vocab used in the lesson starter. Most were able to respond accordingly whilst the others gave vague responses which were improved on during the lesson. All children were completely on task and engaged in their work.

This was an overall good lesson and one that I will remember for many reasons. I used lots of vocabulary and ensured it was only relevant to that particular lesson. The children used the terms appropriately and this is key because cut and crop are used for ‘delete and keep only the parts needed’.

I linked to other subjects and made links clear to the children so that they were able to see they were learning transferable skills. This is important because otherwise some children may feel – why bother.

Modelling was essential in this lesson because of the new programme being used although rather than patronise the children by showing them how to do it, I gave them a set of instructions that were easy to follow. Previous IT subject knowledge was used with the simple command keys.

For the next lesson I would refer to the LO at least 3x in the lesson and teach against the SC. Although I could tick off which ones the pupils has achieved, I didn’t explicitly talk about it and check with the children that they could do what was listed.

An assessment opportunity is to use more of the key vocabulary knowledge.

I can't wait to be invited back to the school (whilst on my second placement) to come and watch the final products at the Oscar's event. There is still some minor adjustments to do including the need to add sound effects but I am confident that even if this doesn't get completed until I leave the school, the children in each group can use their skills to finish the job.