As the topic was Africa the film Zahra – which has no speech – was chosen.
In the first lesson, the teacher played the whole film with just music and did not show them the screen.
Once children had listened to the sounds twice they had to draw what they thought they could hear. As they had heard sounds that they associated with certain things they started to make their own sense of the music and journey.
In a subsequent lesson, children were given nine screenshots from the film. Without any additional information from the teacher, they then had to decide what order they went in. As a result, the children then wrote a sentence for each picture telling a story and making the sentences follow and link together.
Looking at the work children produced in creative writing, most children were engaged and all came up with their own sequence for the pictures and told a story. Children working at a range of different levels wrote quality stories and letters engaging with the film, their own opinions and using a range of punctuation, emotive and descriptive language.
Good for: recount, story mapping