Having been on a 3 day Cooperative Learning course over our 2 inservice days (yea, don’t ask!) I thought I would try and make a big deal of incorporating this into some of our ongoing Moving Image work, maybe also trying to link to Active Learning… thus multi-dividending, ticking every box within range.
Had a conversation with a pal about watching trailers of movies that the class couldn’t get to see. The trailer was deemed suitable for all ages by the film board, but the film, The Watchmen was an 18. Any thoughts? They will have probably seen a trailer in the cinema, or on the net, and may even get to see the film before me! We were looking at character profiles, with this film being ideal, as the characters are, obviously, key to the film, stand out, unique, quite easy to begin to analyse at a simple level and develop further.
We worked with our cooperative learning groups at creating graffiti boards with character description, amazing adjectives, blah blah etc. After having a look at 4 or 5 main characters, we then had the thoughts of the entire class in front of us. From this we were to create a description, profile, newspaper article, start of a news report about the appearance of one of these characters. We then recorded a few of these, using our flip camera, which I hope to get online soon. Interesting that some of those who wrote powerful pieces didn’t want to be recorded, but those who struggled to write their pieces were happy to have their equally powerful descriptions recorded orally. Is that as valid? With regard to it being a piece of writing, does it not have to be written? Or is it a stepping stone, boosting confidence, showing capability, creating supported opportunity?
We have repeated this activity using a short film called The Monk and the Fish, available on the BFI Story Shorts DVD. These characters are a lot simpler and I guess more subtle. Yet due to the experience of working with The Watchmen, the class produced equally good descriptions and profiles of, basically, bland characters.
