Swept along by a film assignment – feel free to use the idea!

Teenagers love a movie. A good film during lesson time is, in the eyes of many of many pupils, about as good as it gets. Because of this I normally start the broad art and culture awareness course that I teach to my fourth years (15-16 year olds) with a module on film making.

The series of lessons is built up essentially of three separate parts.

1. A few theory lessons that look at the history of film and explore the craft of the filmmaker, along with a little shared group analysis of filmmaking techniques.
2. We subsequently watch a movie in class, discuss it as a group before the pupils write their own analysis and evaluation report of what we have seen. I use various films for various classes, favorites from the last few years have been Senna and Amy from Asif Kapadia, great for teenagers with an aversion for documentary films. Alongside these two, Catfish and The Babadook have also been greatly enjoyed.

For a little more reflection on watching films in class, take a look at the links below:

Three film, three reactions

Finding the right film

3. The final part of the module is a practical assignment. The aim of this practical is essentially to get the pupils out of the classroom, and to experience in a more conscious and hands on way, the possibilities of camera use, and alongside this, the importance of the edit.

This third part, the film practical assignment, is without doubt one of my favourite activities of the year. To start with it is a little complex to explain to the class, but once they have got the idea they just love doing it.

The assignment

In bullet points, this is the working process:

• I choose an existing short film (one that is about five minutes long)
• I divide my pupils up into groups of about five (often this is done across three or four classes together)
• I divide the film up into sections (the same number of sections as I have groups)
• I allocate each group a section (normally 20-30 seconds long)
• The groups produce a detailed story board of their fragment. This involves making screenshots, notes about what the camera is doing, notes about the performances being given and very importantly exactly how long the individual shot lasts
• The pupils then head off to reproduce each individual shot as precisely as they possibly can
• The pupils then edit their own work to result in a fragment of the exact same length as the original section that they had been allocated
• The groups hand in their piece of work.
• I then join all the fragments together in the correct order
• I rip the soundtrack of the original film and drop this onto the pupils’ version, add some titles at the beginning and the end and the job is then essentially finished.

This year’s pupil film:

Based on the following original:

 

A few footnotes

For someone with a little knowledge of even the most simply video editing software this is not an overly complex project. However there are a few things to watch out for. Most importantly is the choice of original film. Script that is spoken ‘on camera’ makes the process a lot more complex. The marrying up of the sound of the spoken text from the original and the pupils mouths is difficult and often requires numerous small adjustments. To limit this, choose a film with a narrator, or simply one with the absolute minimum of speech.

This is an incredibly fun assignment to do. It is a carefully framed up activity, and leaves the pupils with a very clear task to carry out. The results can be fantastic and leave the pupils desperate to see the final version, that in my case, is often made by a group of close to one hundred pupils.

We show the finished product at a social event where both parents and pupils are present. It is a great hit every year!

Below are links to the same assignment from previous years:

 

Lovesick II

Black Coffee II

 

A new favourite app…apart from the name!

From time to time I post things about apps that I am making use of in the classroom on the iPads that the pupils I teach all have. One of the limitations I have in this area is that the apps essentially have to be free. Generally the school has a policy that if the app is one that is likely to be used by multiple subject areas they may consider buying a collective license, but if on department, and certainly if it’s just one teacher who’s involved it has to be a freebie!

The art department this understandable policy often presents a problem. There are many good drawing and painting apps out there, but most have restrictions and limitations with the free versions that simply make them less interesting to use. But one that doesn’t suffer from this problem is the truly awfully named MediBang Paint. Whoever thought of that name!

Aside from the name though, this really is an excellent app, with a tremendous range of well-organized possibilities. I’ll be using it during the coming weeks as an extension of an abstraction project that I have been working on. For this application I particularly like the guided drawing tools that allow you to work extensively with concentric circles, parallel lines or with a vanishing point (see the example below).

When my pupils have had a go at producing their own designs I’ll post more.

 

 

TTO Arts subject meeting in Utrecht

Once a year I host a meeting of arts teachers who teach in Dutch bilingual education. This post is especially for those who attended the afternoon meeting on Wednesday 16 November. If you didn’t attend you are of course more than welcome to read on!

 It was such an enthusiastic and engaged afternoon, thanks to all those present for such active participation……it makes leading such an afternoon so much easier and enjoyable.

During the workshop I promised to post a few things on my blog so you have them as a reference. The links below should take you to the documents that you need:

presentation-utrecht-2016

If I am sent more of the clil lesson material that was made during the workshop I’ll add it to the above.

glossary_for_art_teachers (thanks Ron!)

Added to these documents, the four books that I had with me were:

• The Lazy Teacher’s handbook by
• Jumpstart Literacy by Pie Corbett
• 100 Ideas for secondary teachers by Ross Morrison McGill
• Clil Activities by Liz Dale and Rosie Tanner

 The discussion on Wednesday afternoon was very open, free and very useful. To continue that discussion do feel free to contribute to our online forum in the ‘tto art’ group on Facebook. It is a closed group, but send me a request and I’ll open the digital door!

A rebus as a CLIL (content and language integrated learning) activity

rebus
ˈriːbəs/
noun
1. a puzzle in which words are represented by combinations of pictures and individual letters; for instance, apex might be represented by a picture of an ape followed by a letter X.

I’ve been experimenting with a short language and design assignment recently with my two classes of third years (14-15 years old) that I teach. As is often the case with a new idea or assignment, after the first use of the idea a little refining is necessary, but I think there is enough of a finished idea to share it here.
As the definition above a rebus is a mixture of images and text (often in the form of loose letters) that combine to represent a new word or phrase. The most surprising and satisfying rebuses are often those that make unexpected use of the phonetic sounds of particular sections of words.
The assignment was simple; create and illustrate your own rebus. This could be done as either a straight forward black and white, ink on paper illustration or made digitally on the pupils’ iPad or computer. I made a couple of clear requirements for the finished piece of work:
• The rebus itself must contain a minimum of at least two pictorial elements
• The rebus should be placed in front of an appropriate background
I offered an example of the word acrobat to illustrate the sort of possibilities I saw.

The language part of this assignment comes first in the working process. It is very much about opening your mind up to the way words are constructed and thinking about what visual possibilities may be on offer. You want your pupils to think hard and experiment for themselves. My suggestion is to do this part of the the work in class and under almost exam-like conditions. Do not allow your pupils to use their phones or other online devices. Typing ‘rebus’ into a search engine will throw up countless examples that the pupil most likely won’t be able to resist….and the language challenge in the assignment will as a result be largely lost. Instead you could perhaps give them all a dictionary to help them along!
Try also to encourage pupils away from the most simple, unsurprising and illustrative combinations. The word football illustrated by a foot and a ball is unimaginative and obvious. Elements that play into the phonetic sounds of parts of words or phrases are much more fun to play with an deliver a final artwork that becomes a sort of visual and language puzzle.
I chose to set the design work/illustration of the rebus as a homework assignment and gave the pupils a choice of what sort of materials or approaches to use. As I said at the beginning it is still a bit of a work in progress, but below are a few examples of my pupils’ work.

If you are not sure, the three above, in no particular order are ‘electricity’, ‘fireflies’ and ‘beliefs’.

If you are interested in more CLIL related activities click here.