A Level Film Studies Revision Part 1 - Knowledge Organisers & Abstraction

One of the joys of studying anything is the meandering through the subject matter discussing development and decision making in the discipline. This is where I started in September of 2017 with an excellent class of smart first years (I work in a College) who had chosen to come to us to pursue, amongst other subjects, Film Studies A Level. It is my third-year teaching Film Studies along with GCSE and A Level Media and I have been a member of Edusites Film and Media since I was first offered Film Studies (Yes!) on my timetable.

Could you as an Edusites member involve your students in the next phase of the project?

Send photographs of completed or semi completed Knowledge Organisers to Edusites

Mondrian's Abstraction Tree Drawing Number One

Students come to class already knowing so many film texts and it is our role as teacher or lecturer is to broaden most student experience of film beyond Rom Coms and Action films to learn about film as a medium for thinking about the world…not too much of an ask there then…Of course I also teach the real Film Geeks whose knowledge is almost as good as my own and they become my co teachers sharing their passion for the medium.

Mondrian's Abstraction Tree Drawing Number Two

However we have now thoroughly enveloped ourselves and our wonderful students in this vast new knowledge and need to start honing down into workable exam preparation. The horror of the Mock Exam results has illustrated for me that my students do not adequately know the films we have studied despite working through them in class and being directed to the case studies and with me having written quick tests to check that they have read them.

Mondrian's Abstraction Tree Drawing Number Three

When Edusites requested worked essays to support revision I went back to them with some mock responses which, when I had read them, made me want to stop teaching there and then. My students despite being able to talk a great talk in the classroom had not bought their A, B, C or even E game to these essays. I called the Edusites office and they put me in contact with people who are the experts and I had conversations with Edusites writers and put this first part of the revision plan together.

Mondrian's Abstraction Tree Drawing Number Four - Piet you've lost too much detail.

One of the dilemmas facing us when we are delivering a new specification is can we keep ahead of the students? I ground myself into the ground trying to do as much for my students as possible while also trying to ingest the contents, assessment objectives and basic rudiments of the exam. I realised this process of giving my own thinking directly to my class stops my students from engaging in that process themselves because I am teaching myself and NOT getting them to engage at the abstraction level.

Mondrian's Abstraction Tree Drawing Number Five - Piet, You'll never pass with that.

• We experimented with knowledge organisers on our own students, and this is what they came up with..

The exam reports from the Summer 2018 AS exams identified areas for development which may well be similar for the A Level students taking the exam this summer. I certainly identified with some of the issues as they were very similar to ones I had seen on the Mock exams.

So each knowledge organiser has sections of the exam report under each of the headings we worked on for the Knowledge Organisers. They don't have to use it and if you have other ideas do get in touch with Edusites but I found that this scaffolding offers my students pointers when working with the case study to identify the important information to memorise. The examples of student work below has not always got this right but, I found, that it's useful for them to keep those issues in mind when abstracting the important for exam

Beth a second-Year students loves Schnabels 2007 The Diving Bell and The Butterfly and agreed to be our ‘Experimental Subject 1’

• She also has really nice handwriting…

Here is her first draft of her Knowledge Organiser

In discussion we decided that the next part of this project for Beth is to pick out key sections to learn for this text developing this KO into an abstraction of the details of the case study.

A Journey through Abstraction

Oscar from our first year (we changed from Eduqas to OCR with current first year) chose Gus Van Sant’s 2003 Elephant as our ‘Experimental Subject 2’. Less tidy handwriting but Oscar has taken Beth’s idea but highlighted a paper copy of the Case study first.

First Knowledge Organiser - Too much to memorise for an exam morning dump?

• Then created a first draft (we worked on this as a class and Oscar's was a good example)

Second KO - This can be memorised

• For homework Oscar worked on his Knowledge Organiser 3.0

Please share with us your students' attempts at Knowledge Organisers so we can all see where we are and how we are tackling these thorny problems.

Linked here are Knowledge Organisers for all of the films we have covered in detail through Case Studies, Workbooks and Comparison Studies plus all films on the specification.

• Eduqas Film Knowledge Organisers
• OCR Film Knowledge Organisers

Nat is a Film and Media Lecturer in the North of England. He got in touch and we worked out a plan.

• Coming shortly - Questions plus activities to create your own questions as a series of lessons.
• Got another idea? Contact us and we can discuss a way forward for the benefit of all Edusites members.