Developing confidence, communication & oral language through film

Producing the Pt England Network News (PENN) for the school has started off with a bang this year! We have got some fantastic new equipment to improve the quality of the product we create at school. I have also already started seeing the potential that using film at school has on learning for the children, particularly confidence, communication and oral language.

There is an understanding amongst my PENN crew that we are a team. I am at the same level as them in the team. This is the first step I use to create confidence amongst the children and it sometimes takes some time for the children to get to the point where they realise they can tell me what to do, rather than ask. An example of this is if the sun is in their eyes when filming. Rather than ask to move, the understanding is that the children can tell me that we need to move. When the script is scrolling too fast, the understanding is that the children tell me that it needs to be slowed down, rather than ask for it to be slowed down. 

The pattern I often see with new children is this:

On Thursday last week, one of my presenters said that they wanted to develop the weather section of the news to provide more important information. In particular, adding in UV levels and fire risk. We decided that having a UV level included was important for the audience to know about.

On Saturday, I received this email:

Yes, emailing you on the weekends is probably the wrong time but I want to add the UV level part. It's to tell whether you need to stay protected from the sun, or if it's ok and you won't get a sunburn.

Thanks if you want to add it.

Here is some of the email thread we had. My emails are in red, where the student's are in blue.

Hi _________,

I have taken the fire danger level out but thought we could include the tide times and water temperature at Pt England Beach. What do you think? Keeping the UV level in is great!

Miss West

YAY to UV level! I thought I was going to add that but I think that it was too much information. So that means that:

Tomorrow's weather, UV level, tide times (maybe for after school so they can play at the beach after school) and water tempo is going to be added for weather. And inquiry is the easiest one. For now...

That's it. Let's see what we think and decide if we want to remove anything this morning.

Ok, let's do more detail person to person in like 10 minutes

I was so impressed when this student re-voiced our conversation in writing, creating a great summary of what we had discussed (see above in blue). This is a great example of me working alongside a child at their level, encouraging them to solve the problems with confidence.

Here is the finished product of the weather segment this morning after the email stream (go to 6m36s).