I would like to start this post with a Giovanni Saratori’s quote: ‘The vision of the cinema/ film is in the eye of the beholder’. As this week we have been dealing with the topic of using films in the Primary’s class (Literature Project with films), it occurred to me to speak about the use and techniques to work with films in a class. Cinema is a resource of information which affords to know other cultures, display both the past, the present and even the future; Cinema as we all know has a ludic dimension with a formative facet.
If we go to other Primary Education classes, we will observe that many teachers who use films in an appropriate way as a didactic resource and others who do not. Many teachers like cinema and think it is a good method to use in the class but they don’t know how to introduce it correctly in the class. From my own experience, I have witnessed, from the Primary stage until even the university, that a minority of teachers have played a film in relation to the content we were watching in class. In this, the simple role of the teacher was to play the film and here ends everything. Supposedly, the teacher thinks that students have understood the film, know how to relate it with the content. However, there is no kind of scaffolding, nor exercises of expression, creativity to work the film…
Precisely for that reason, my objective on writing this post is to provide some methodological ideas for the use of films in the Primary Education class due to I am totally in favour about its use:
- To do as we are doing in class with the Film Project: Each student has to create its own character. These are gathered and students write a plot/film invented with the aspects more interesting for students, such as actions, characteristics, scenery, dialogues…
- In a chronological order and by sequences or scenes of short length (depending on the duration of the scene, but more or less 1 or 2 minutes). To begin with, it consists in watching the film with no sound and imagine what characters are talking, or describe the scene, characters, etc… Once, to play the scene-sequence with no sound but with subtitles. And finally, play the scene with sound and subtitles.
- Provide like a ‘writing frame for films’ with the title, scene, main and secondary characters; scenery (background); Scene’s plot; dialogues; Depending on the film … historical moment, contextualisation, period; Character’s characterisation (clothes, colours, personality…); setting…
- Cross curricular films: We can watch a film and relate it to the content seen in class; For example: If we analise ‘The Lion King’ we can relate it to the Science subject with the different habitats, vertebrates and invertebrates animals, the food chain…;
- Regarding the language, we can work in films with the flash-back sequences where it is blend the past and present. Furthermore, the student can create an ending regarding the future.
To sum up, cinema can provide student to develop its comprehension skills of creation, analysis. Also, as a way of expressing feelings, emotions promoting a positive and confident atmosphere providing the collaborative work.
Good afternoon Bea!
I love this post! It is full of good ideas!
First of all, I have to say that my own experience, about films at school during my childhood was the same as yours, the teacher playing a film on the DVD and usually there was not any relationship with the content, nor exercises related with the film or anything to work on the film. The only exception was when we were learning about the ancient societies and we watch “Gladiator” and “Troy” but we did not do any exercise related with it.
Secondly, I love your ideas to introduce films in our classes. The first two (creating a characters and the short length) are a good motivation and makes our students work on their own creativity. Maybe also a good idea will be, in the second idea, divide the class into groups and each group have to focus in one aspect (for example describing the situation or making the dialogue) then, and if you work on different shorts, you can change roles.
As a conclusion say that films are a good tool to motivate students because it is something that you normally did not do at school and, in my opinion, doing these kinds of ideas that you say in your post will make funnier to learn how to express, create a text from a specific thing or even learn contents.
Hi Bea! One more time you achieved to create a delightful entry.
A few weeks ago I did an entry which I think could it be consider complementary to yours and vice versa. I devoted it to talk about the multiple benefits that the use of book-based films can have for primary pupils. So when I read the title of your entry I couldn’t resist the temptation to read the whole of it, as well as to comment on it! :)
I totally agree with you as well as with Maria: films can be a fantastic tool in primary classrooms. It is quite surprising that we share that opinion because unfortunately, I also had the same experience as you with films during my scholar life. Any pedagogical purpose was related with their watching, except to entertain us. So something big has happened this year which has been able to change our minds
Actually my mind started to change when I was carrying out my first practicum. It took place the month before Christmas, so the pupils of my class were reading “A Christmas Carol” of Charles Dickens. When I was a child, I used to do an exam after finishing a reading book; however, what pupils did that time was to watch the film based on the tale, and after that they carried out lots of activities which connected both the book and the film. I particularly liked two of the activities:
– In the first one, pupils had to watch a little section of the film without sounds. Then the teacher asked them to find, in a concrete chapter of their books, which dialogue or part of the text they thought was linked to the section they had seen. They developed this activity with other little sections of the film.
– Another activity was to, individually, think and write how the main characters represented in the film differ from how they thought those characters look like when they were reading the book.
These examples are related with book-based films; however, you have provided us with wonderful activities that can be developed with every kind of film, which I consider is something great, so thanks a million! 
Do not hesitate that I will put them in practice as soon as I can
In a nutshell, films can be an excellent tool to learn new contents as well as to develop or improve skills if we know how to use them appropriately; and thank you one more time for your nice entry. :)
Hello Bea! I like your post a lot!
I also love cinema and I totally agree with you in using it at school to teach new concepts or to reinforce the old ones.
When I was in primary education or in High school I remember to watch leisure films at the end of each trimester but not any meaningful movie, just some sciences documentaries. The idea of it was not bad but it is what you say, we didn’t work it after watching it. There was only once, in philology when I watched the movie 1984 and we made a debate about it.
All your ideas are very original to introduce and to develop cinema in the classroom. Children can work in groups or individually and about every topic we want. Cinema offers a very wide range of possibilities to work with pupils from watching a movie since creating their own movie as you have said. But I think to watch a film is also very interesting because there are thousands of films and we can choose one to teach students something. We can establish a debate, to learn values and moral principles, to analyze the language, or to learn about the past and history. These are just osme ideas but I am sure you have plenty more. =)
Lidia
Thank you girls for all your comments, for what I read you liked the post and I’m so grateful that you all commented on it. I will take into account your advices and suggestions because It is true that films are an excelent tool and we have to take advantage of this
Regards!