Year 9/10 English – A Current Affair

During term 1 Justin’s Year 9/10 English class completed a unit of work investigating the television program A Current Affair.

This involved students:

  • Accessing a range of A Current Affair stories.
  • Discussing the structure of the stories and how this structure is repeated in every story.
  • Completing a 500 word essay comparing and contrasting two ACA segments.
  • Producing their own ACA story using the iPads and MacBooks.
  • Writing a 300 word self evaluation of their ACA story. Assessment included planning/script, storyboarding, group work, message/purpose and videography.
The scaffolding that Justin provided students was excellent and gave students every opportunity to do well in this unit of work. The following are some of the scaffolding documents provided to the students.

Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 9.59.57 AM

Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 10.20.16 AM Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 10.20.51 AM

Screen Shot 2016-05-04 at 10.18.56 AM

 

Students planned and produced their own A Current Affair story. They used the iPads to record video footage and iMovie on their MacBooks to edit and produce the final product.

Year 9/10s presenting concepts with MacBooks

In HPE the 9/10 students have been learning about the benefits of physical activity in three areas; physical, social and mental. We did some background work on the benefits in each area through a great website called Life Dojo which provided short videos explaining the benefits to each area of a persons life. We collated notes individually and shared these in class discussions. I then wanted students to consolidate their learning by presenting their information using iMovie Trailer.

iMovie Trailer is very structured and is limited in the amount of text students can use. The format allows students to drop in images or video and add text, however the images/video flick through at predetermined speeds from 1.5 – 3.5 seconds. The trailers themselves range from 50 seconds to just over 1 minute. Just think of any movie trailer you have seen and you get an idea of what iMovie Trailer does.

It was the structure that attracted me to using this tool as a way for students to present their work. The limited text and short time span meant that students needed to consider very carefully how they were going to get the message of “The benefits of physical activity” across to and audience. Below are two finished examples by Bianca and Connor.

How great is it that our 9/10 students can use this software at school and also at home on the same machine. For those students who have not completed their iMovie trailer in the allotted class time I can comfortably ask them to complete it at home knowing they have the tools to do so.

Connor’s iMovie Trailer “The benefits of physical activity”

Bianca’s iMovie Trailer “The benefits of physical activity”