At Pooles Park Primary School we have 3 classes which are mixed Yr3/4. We chose to do this project as our first writing outcome of the year back in September 2019. This was a three week unit which culminated in a diary entry.
Week 1: this included using inference, making predictions and discussing.
We started the unit by asking the children to close their eyes and listen to the backing track, using this to predict the setting and story. The children then watched half of the film, and predicted its ending, drawing on their own experiences to do this. We then fully watched the film and the children compared the similarities and differences between this and their predictions.
We also had some really interesting discussions about pets in different cultures, as the children compared their attitudes towards dogs in the countries where their families originated compared to the UK.
Week 2: this included planning to write, revising grammar and using P4C to extend ideas.
We had a great Philosophy for Kids discussion with our respective classes. Across the years we discussed key themes such as resilience, generosity, sharing, conquering our fears, things that people might be scared off and animal rights. We also looked into comparing what we could retrieve about the boy, and what we could infer about the boy from his actions and from the setting of the film
Week 3: this included writing, editing and performing.
Our final piece of writing was a diary entry written from the boy’s perspective. We focused on including as many thoughts and feelings as possible, and including powerful adjectives.
Overall, we really enjoyed this unit. The children were immediately hooked and it was great to use a film which was so different to the films they are used to. We also found it incredibly accessible; this was particularly important as we have such a range of age in our classes. We also have large amount of children who speak little English, and it was great to the see these children able to access the unit in the same way as the rest of the class.
Screening Learning 