KS1/2 English - Reading Film: The Lesson

In this programme, we see how a short animation film can be used to develop film literacy.

Peta Higgs, a teacher at Cranmer School in South London, shows a film entitled The Monk and the Fish to her Year 6 pupils.

Set in an abbey, the story follows the increasingly frantic efforts of a monk trying to catch a fish. The film has a sound track of classical music but no dialogue and only a few sound effects.

Peta begins her lesson by getting the pupils to listen to the soundtrack on its own and to practice their skills of inference and deduction.

They then develop their ideas about the monk's character by using the drama technique called Sculptor and Sculpted. Peta believes that visually rehearsing their ideas in this way helps the children structure their writing.

In the second half of the lesson Peta introduces film language. The pupils practise doing different camera shots and begin to critique parts of the film. By the end of the lesson the class predicts how the story might end, and reacts to what actually happens.