Athole McLauchlan is a teacher at Bearsden Primary School. He is writing here in a personal capacity.
Don't cross the streams!
Dr Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good / bad thing. What do you mean, "bad?"
Dr Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks Egon.
Ghostbusters came out in 1984. I was 9 years old and in Primary 4. I remember we read a lot of books and listened to excellent radio plays but home access to films and arcade games through VHS tapes and the ZX Spectrum was still brand new. School access was non existent. How much has changed? A 21st Century classroom demands to be different as our understanding of literacy has matured. We need to be braver at allowing the different streams of literacy to cross.
I believe MIE is integral to connecting the dots between the core literacy skills of listening, talking, reading and writing. With my P6 class I want to explore further the dangers and risks from crossing the streams and hopefully strike a better balance and relationship between different forms of literacies and texts. If nothing else, exploding at the speed of light sounds like a lot of fun!
Basic plan of action
MIE will be at the centre of all my cross-curricular planning. The topics this year are Climate Change, Japan, The Victorians and Enterprise. The main resources for watching films will be the BFI short film DVDs and the amazing clips from Scotland On Screen, as well as clips from feature length films and other sources (TV, internet etc.) that relate to the topics. I plan to build up the film making skills of the class in small bite sized chunks. Simple Powerpoint presentations will lead on to basic digital storytelling skills in Moviemaker, then stop motion animations and finally live action productions.
There's even a subplot
The subplot of my story will be my attempt to get MIE moving amongst my colleagues. I am passionate about MIE and have experimented with lots of different types of projects, but I also know it takes time to adopt and feel confident about using the techniques. From experience, the easiest and most rewarding place to begin is by watching and discussing films.