Schools and Cinema is a lasting project of our school that parallels and empowers our brand new E-STAFF project. Each year, six films are selected according to their educational or cultural value and to the age of the students. The related teams of teachers get a training regarding those films, prepare the students before watching the film, take them to the cinema, and debrief through various activities when they come back to school.
This year, E-STAFF associated to Schools and Cinemas, opening a brand new way between cinema learning and English learning. We made our first attempt with Henry Selick's 2009 film CORALINE. This is how it worked :
1) The E-STAFF students triggered the whole process in the E-STAFF class. They learnt cinema-related vocabulary in English through drama activities (role playing and sketches) and used it to anticipate the contents of the film CORALINE (genre, impact, characterization, inciting incident). To do that, they studied an audio extract from the film trailer as well as the film poster.
2) The French teachers of the team prepared the students to watch the film - which is quite scary! - focusing on the themes of fear and terror. The strategy was to introduce the idea of "scaring for fun" and organizing activities around it.
3) The English teachers reused the film poster and took advantage of the E-STAFF students of their classes to foster activities of oral expression in English, extending the process to the non-E-STAFF students through the description of the heroin.
4) After the film, the French teachers checked the predictions of the students and started a debate around the film. They had to report and classify the various categories related to all that is scary in the film CORALINE : atmosphere, characters, sounds, image, camera types, camera angles, etc. This work opened on the study of Alice in Wonderland and the theme of magic in child literature.
5) The English teachers organized a collective writing of the film review with both E-STAFF and non-E-STAFF students, based on the genre of the film, the initial situation (with a strong emphasis on characterization) and the inciting incident. Each student had to add a small personal commentary and rating on the film. This work opened on the creation of a "film corner" section at the end of the English copybook.
6) Finally, the review of the film in English - with a selection of the best commentaries - was published in our brand new English and Foreign Language School Magazine. This magazine is part of our EMI (Education to Media and Information) strategy, which is also part of the E-STAFF project.
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