Lesson Plans on Film Making - Following These Ideas Can Quickly Get Your Students Interested

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There is no medium more ideal for storytelling than film. In a classroom setting, lesson plans on film making can be an excellent teaching tool to promote and support literacy attainment in elementary schools. Lessons can be as simple or as detailed as teachers want, and can be easily adapted to suit interests, thematic content and student abilities. The process itself can be broken into many different stages, and is a resourceful strategy for teaching with many assessment opportunities.

The creative planning process requires students to exercise their collaborative writing skills, and allows teachers to plan writing lessons that divide the process into teachable segments. Initial lessons may have story structure as the main focus, using group brainstorms as an instructional strategy. Next, a script will need to be written by students, which may also present opportunities to teach about tone of voice. For example, documentaries often use formal tones from the narrator, and informal tones from interviewees. Finally, students can illustrate a storyboard, thus allowing those with a visual style of learning and those who lack confidence with writing to actively participate.

Reading will also benefit from the filmmaking process. Students will constantly read other student work during collaborative writing, and will also interpret and re-read work of their own during the natural progression of the project. Acting in the film will also require reading of the script.

For those students who are less confident or speak English as a second language, filmmaking can greatly help with listening and speaking by providing a well structured and planned environment. Confident students will also relish the opportunity to excel. Valid assessments will also be easier to obtain when listening and speaking activities are recorded in the form of storyboards and the film itself.

Students will also rapidly learn about such viewing conventions as "audience view point" as they construct a viewing project. Although viewing has traditionally been difficult to assess, much like speaking and listening, evidence of understanding will be very clear in the resultant film.

It may seem difficult for teachers to collect all the equipment needed for film making, and this may put some teachers off the idea. Technophobes may also baulk at the technological aspects inherent in the project. It does not need to be difficult, however. Video footage can be taken with personal cameras, webcams, or even student owned camcorders. Whilst editing programs are excellent, they are an added extra that is not necessary when using camcorders. Students and teachers simply may need to compensate by spending extra time on the preparation and planning phase of the project.

If teachers do decide to use editing programs on the computer, students may feel much more motivated to edit their work after filming. Evaluation of their own work and the work of other students will occur as editing progresses and the finished film is viewed.

There is a definite advantage in implementing lesson plans on film making to support the literacy program. There are so many different ways of presenting the process of the project that any teacher, experienced or otherwise, can plan inventive ways to make literacy appealing.

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Source by Mike D. Edwards