7d Case Study (iii): Using texts from the community culture
Katie’s knowledge of the Year 6 children she teaches has shown her that they often have more experience of film and video in their home lives than they do of books, and that they talk about these to each other. She uses these ‘funds of knowledge’ acquired outside school in explaining, evaluating and drawing evidence from favourite films and videos, to demonstrate how to structure a written response to the comprehension of a printed text in their SATs’ test. See 3a: Key Issues in Language and Learning.
About half a term is spent focusing on writing a single, well-structured response, which follows a modelled sequence of statement, use of textual evidence, explanation and conclusion. Clips are used in preference to whole films so that the children develop a detailed knowledge of what is presented including the techniques used. This also avoids the difficulty of age classification of films as the teacher checks that the clips themselves are always suitable for the child’s age even if the film as a whole has a certificate above U. She also obtains parental permission.
The clips used are usually from the commercial cinema and television (for example, Lord of the Rings and Shackleton) so that they are within the children’s out–of–school experience. The clip is the only text used for the initial weeks, with the relevant printed text used only in the final stage. This reversal of a common classroom practice (using the film of the book to support understanding of the written word) reflects the children’s frequent out–of–school experience of seeing a film and then reading the book.
Katie also draws on the children’s common experience of watching a video in a group of people (family or friends), discussing it immediately and then again later on with other peers and adults, giving rise to a series of evaluative statements which are constantly passed on and tested against those of others. The clip is watched in class, and the children then compose an individual general statement on ‘Post Its’ which they stick to their jumpers. They circulate, discussing these with as many others as possible, before joining to evaluate their judgements and compose a collaborative statement. This serves as a model for their subsequent individual statements and, ultimately, for their response to the printed text The process is then repeated for the other elements of a complete response.
Katie calls this her ‘maximum input, minimum output’ model where little individual written work produced but what there is, is of high quality (reflected in the very high proportion of the class achieving level 5 in writing). The lengthy, reiterative approach mirrors real life learning but the process always results in the construction of a “schooled text”, an individual written response, to which both the children’s home funds of knowledge and Katie’s school expertise have contributed.
Contact details: thoughton@englishmartyrs.co.uk
Student teachers might: consider what other texts in non print media could be used in this way; consider what other ways of responding to text could help with written comprehension
 
| 
