Leading Literacy Network Twilight

Focus on Film

Information Pack

Lancashire Primary Strategy: Literacy

Presented by Lancashire’s Leading Literacy Teachers

British Film Institute ResourcesBritish Film Institute Resources

A range of short films for primary schools is

available from the British Film Institute.

These can be used to read as film texts, for

responses through drama and writing tasks, or

as content when working towards a final

written outcome.

• Starting Stories DVD for 3-7 year olds

• Starting Stories 2 DVD for 3-7 year olds (available

January 2007)

• Story Shorts DVD for age 7 plus

• Story Shorts 2 DVD for age 7 plus

• Real Shorts – Non-fiction and documentary films

from age 11 upwards

• Show Us a Story – A guide for Primary Schools on

teaching moving image, covering a range of themes

and tastes. Provides clear practical guidance and recommendations on

how to use a wealth of films.

Further details are available from

www.bfi.org.uk/education

BFI Education Mailing List If you would like to receive regular mailings about BFI education resources, INSET, MA level distance learning courses, conferences, advance information about BFI Southbank events for schools and colleges and other BFI materials, which we think you may be interested in. Please complete the form below and return to: Tony Wicker BFI Education Resources PO Box 105 Rochester Kent ME2 4BE FULL NAME ________________________________________________________________________ DEPARTMENT ______________________________________________________________________ SCHOOL/COLLEGE ___________________________________________________________________ ADDRESS __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________POSTCODE __________________________ TELEPHONE ___________________________ E-MAIL ______________________________________ SUBJECT TAUGHT ___________________________________________________________________ AGE GROUP/LEVEL TAUGHT ___________________________________________________________ WHERE DID YOU FIND OUT ABOUT BFI EDUCATION? _______________________________________ Details to be removed if you are already on our mailing list ______________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________

The BFI would like to add your name and personal details to our marketing list so we can keep you informed about our screenings, events, products, services and charitable activities I agree to this use of my personal data From time to time the BFI would like to share your details with other organisations, which we think you may be interested in I agree to this use of my personal data For more information about BFI education activities and services visit: www.bfi.org.uk/education

At the MediaGuardianEdinburghTelevisionFestival inAugust 2003,Tessa Jowell,secretary ofstate forculture, mediaand sport,

announced that ‘in the modern world,media literacy will become as importanta skill as maths or science’. This was metwith various kinds of incredulity. The ideaof ‘media studies in the primary school’,some of the papers put it, was taken to be self-evidently ridiculous.Nevertheless the time has clearly cometo give her statement the seriousattention it deserves.

The job of fostering media literacy hasbeen enshrined in the CommunicationsAct of 2003 as a responsibility of Ofcom,the new regulatory body for electronicmedia. Although Ofcom declares itsintention of working on media literacywith a wide range of partners, it seemsworryingly possible that the conceptcould shrink to a small and well-definedset of skills. Media-literate ‘consumer-citizens’, as Ofcom calls us, will be able tolaunch a browser, do their tax returnsonline, announce family events by mobilephone, put their children to bed beforethe watershed and register complaintsabout bad language in EastEnders. Itwould be easy to conclude that marketforces will ensure that we all acquire theseskills, so expensive curricular initiatives formedia literacy will not be necessary.

I would like to think that this is an over-pessimistic scenario. We all know thatpeople get most of their informationabout the world from broadcast sourcesrather than the press, and are consumingvast amounts of film and TV drama andentertainment every week. Can schoolsreally continue to ignore the fact that theworld is no longer completely dominated

Cary Bazalgette

by print media? We know that the idea ofteachers as ‘informed professionals’ isbeginning to gain ground. Money isbeing spent on the development of leadpractitioners and classroom-basedresearch; the Tomlinson report proposes astronger role for teachers as assessors inthe new 14–19 qualifications structure. Inthis context perhaps we could embark ona rethink of what we really mean byliteracy, without being terrorised by theprospect of extreme reactions from somesections of the press.

Such a rethink might start, daringly, with anew look at children’s ‘pre-literacy’experiences. We know that they watch anenormous amount of moving imagemedia. Televisions are on in many homesfor much of the day, and it’s commonpractice for parents to use television orvideo as a child-minder. We also knowthat children’s engagement with themoving image is often quite active. Theyquickly identify favourite films andprogrammes. They use visual search on avideo recorder to view and re-viewsegments of videos that they like, overand over again. They can do this by thetime they are two and a half. So by thetime they get to school, most children willhave been studying moving image mediafor at least two years.

Is it really legitimate to use the word‘studying’ for that kind of activity? Theconventional view is that time spentwatching television and video is timewasted. We’re told it makes children lesssociable, more obese, predisposedtowards violence and sexual stereotyping,less able to concentrate, lacking inlinguistic skills – a whole string of badeffects, presenting teachers with anotherset of deficits to overcome.

Whatever the value of such claims, it mustalso be true that if children have spent allthat time with TV then they must havelearned something, because little childrendo not waste time. They learn. They maynot learn what we want them to learn, but

everything they encounter or docontributes to their learning: they learnmore at that age than they ever will at anyother stage of their lives. So rather thandismiss all that TV watching as useless,let’s consider what they may have learntfrom it.

Research showsi that, contrary to what isgenerally believed, children who candemonstrate good comprehension oftelevision narratives at the age of five arehighly likely to become good readers bythe time they are eight. This is becausetheir pre-school years of watching TV andvideo have developed a range of skillsthat will play a significant role in their laterlearning. First of all they have learned todecode the language of moving imagemedia, for example: the conventions thatgovern how close-ups are used; eyelinematching; the use of jump cuts ordissolves to convey the passage of time.Some might snigger at the triviality ofsuch knowledge; you might be bristling atthe jargon, but the fact is that we have alllearned those conventions, whether wecan articulate them or not, and we couldnot understand TV or film without them.They do constitute a kind of formalgrammar, and children’s achievement inlearning much of it by the age of four issurely worth acknowledging.

Secondly young children have acquired arange of generic comprehension skillsthat can be applied to different media.Before you can follow the structure of astory you need to learn that stories have astructure, and that different kinds of storycan have different kinds of structure.Before you can identify different kinds ofstory you need to learn that stories can beof different kinds, and that there are rulesthat govern these differences. These verybasic concepts eventually enable childrento predict story events in different genres.They also learn that characters maysometimes be types rather than unique,and that character can be signalled bycertain conventions of appearance, dress,behaviour and so on. Thus skills of

THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY

Literacy and the mediaCary Bazalgette, Head of Education, British Film Institute

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate debate.Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of QCA.

inference can be built up, long beforechildren encounter written texts.

It would be hard to argue that these skillsare not a useful basis for the developmentof literacy. But our culture’s superstitiousdread of the one-eyed monster in theliving room encourages teachers todisdain children’s media knowledge andregard it as separate from, and inferior to,the ‘real knowledge’ which constitutereading and writing.

What would it look like if, instead, teachersfelt confident about working with thisknowledge and building on it? Animportant initial step would be torecognise that film, television and videoare useful stepping stones to theacquisition of traditional literacy. Whenteachers take account of children’s earlyaudio-visual experiences, encouragechildren to talk about them, and showvideos in class for discussion and as astimulus, then that clearly helps children tobecome competent readers and writers.

However this is not enough. Unlessteachers also recognise that film,television and video are more than juststepping stones, but valuable forms ofcommunication in their own right, then ahuge area of children’s culturaldevelopment is being ignored. In whatother area of the curriculum would weleave it to the commercial marketplace todetermine subject content? To say thatteachers have a responsibility to developchildren’s moving image media knowledge

sounds dreary and burdensome. But in factteachers do have a thrilling opportunity tooffer children unforgettable experiences,both in watching unusual and challengingfilms and in experimenting with movingimage computer software to make theirown creative statements. Some teachersare already doing thisii, but many morewould like to and are inhibited by theperception that it is not ‘proper’classroom activity: that their headteacher,or Ofsted, wouldn’t like it.

We have to get away from the idea thatmedia literacy is separate from literacy andwill represent an additional burden toteachers. We also have to get away fromthe perception of media literacy as anextension of media studies, dependent onheavy theory and specialist jargon. Nor dowe need the deficit model in which medialiteracy is all about protecting childrenfrom internet predators and avariciousadvertisers. What we do need is anacquisition model of media literacyiii,which offers essentially desirableexperiential and learning gains, thatpromises to develop children’s individualpotential, and that can be seen as apositive benefit to our culture and to society.

Philip Pullman recently proposedanalogies between Stalinist Russia,Khomeini’s Iran and, potentially, Bush’sAmerica.iv He characterised them all as‘theocracies’, but argued that the linksbetween them had less to do with religionthan with the important distinction ‘that

theocracies don’t know how to read, anddemocracies do’. In theocracies, he says,the interpretation of all texts is providedby powerful groups – priests, commissars,wealthy elites, global corporations. Indemocracies, citizens must have thefreedom – and the skills – to make theirown interpretations of texts. It would bebizarre if that distinction referred only towritten texts. Our texts take many forms,and it’s time our literacy reflected that fact.

This document can also be viewed ordownloaded in PDF format from thewebsite www.qca.org.uk/futures/.

Notes

i See for example ‘Role of early narrativeunderstanding in predicting future readingcomprehension’ by Kathleen E. Kremer, Julia S.Lynch, Panayiota Kendeou, Jason Butler and Paulvan den Broek, University of Minnesota, andElizabeth Pugzles Lorch, University of Kentucky,paper presented at AERA conference 2002, andavailable at www.ciera.org.

ii The Primary and KS3 Strategies are supportingsuch work, using the BFI resources Starting Stories,Story Shorts and Screening Shorts, and the BFIteachers’ guides Look Again! And Moving Imagesin the Classroom. For more information on theseresources and linked training, seewww.bfi.org.uk/education/.

iii See Tyner, K, Chapter 8, Literacy in a digital world, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, USA, pages 153–165.

iv Philip Pullman, ‘Text, lies and videotape’, GuardianReview, 6 November 2004, pages 4–5.

Suggested films for use within the Renewed Framework from BFI

BFI have produced two new DVDs with supporting guidance and links to units from the Renewed Framework.

• Starting Stories for F/KS1 • Story Shorts 2 for KS2

Further details available at www.bfi.org.u,/education/teaching/primary Year group Renewed

Framework Unit

Renewed Framework

Strand

Suggested outcomes

Film Synopsis

Reception/Y1 Year 1 Unit 1 Stories with familiar settings

Drama Creating and shaping texts

Narrative and performance

Tom Sweep Tom is a conscientious road sweeper, but despite his best efforts to keep the street clean, passers-by keep dropping litter.

Year 2 Unit 2 Traditional stories

Engaging with and responding to texts Creating and shaping texts

Alternative traditional stories/endings

Little Pig is Flying Little Pig dreams of flying. She sets off to find someone to teach her to fly. Along the way she meets various characters who try to help her. Jack and the Beanstalk A distinctive and beautiful retelling using silhouette animation.

Year 3 Unit 2 Myths and Legends

Drama Puppet play The Tortoises’ idea The film is based on a myth from Nigeria, created by children with a pupil-generated soundtrack.

Year 4 Unit 4 Stories which raise issues

Engaging with and responding to texts

Predicting and presenting the ending of a narrative

Between Us The theme is communication. Two children, Lukas and Amanda, are stuck in a traffic jam in separate cars. The director tracks the emotional timeline to its poignant conclusion.

Year 5 Unit 3 Persuasive Writing

Creating and shaping texts

Persuasive property sheet to sell a house

Flatlife An animation focusing on the consequences of the harmless everyday actions of four ordinary people, who have the misfortune to live next to each other.

Year 6 Unit 1 Power of Imagery

Understanding and interpreting texts

Poem Nits Seven year old James has nits. But there are some things more worrying than head lice.

Year 6 Non-fiction Engaging with and responding to texts

Non-fiction journal entry

Birthday Boy 3D animation based around a young boy during the Korean War. Mistaking a parcel for a birthday present, he finds his father’s wallet, dog tags and boots and learns of his death.