A
Film Circle is a structured group project where five students are
assigned different roles to perform according to their abilities and
interests.A worksheet about the
movie The Circle, discussing sense of community and the way people are
seeing the online world and participating.
Each student in the group has to analyze a film from a
different perspective and present conclusions. Every role is designed
around specific activities that are completed before, while, and after
watching a film.
The
process is scaffolded—at every stage the activities include contextual
support to build on background knowledge and make understanding easier,
including the use of worksheets with graphic organizers, visual
representations, word banks, and sentence starters. Without this
scaffolding, the project would not have been possible.
The effective way to build students‟ interest of learning English vocabulary is by using media which can increase students' enthusiasm for learning English vocabulary and enrich their vocabulary.
The suitable media that can be used is audio visual media because the media contains pictures and voice such as using film.There are many films that can be used to teach vocabulary to young learners. One of them is Shawn the Train Film series.
For example,
before the film students learn relevant vocabulary and discuss a preview
of what they are going to see. While watching the film, students
practice basic listening and reading skills.
After viewing the film,
group members engage in cooperative learning as they share with each
other the information related to their role assignments; this exchange
ensures that each student contributes to the discussion and practices speaking.
Example:
We
chose the movie Goal! The Dream Begins (Cannon 2006).
This is the story
of a Mexican boy who lives illegally in the United States. His dream is
to be a professional football player, but he suffers from asthma. He is
given the chance to play for Newcastle United, where, after facing many
challenges, he succeeds.
This film worked perfectly for our students
because the majority of them are football fans, and the message of
perseverance is inspiring for young people. Assigning five student roles
for a Film Circle.
1. The Designer:
The
student with the Designer role summarizes the entire film through
graphic representation of the main scenes. This role uses visual
intelligence, sequential thinking, and oral summarizing skills.
The task
is to create pictures that illustrate a timeline of the plot and
contain corresponding sentences about what was happening at each point
in the film.
The Designer is given a worksheet with a timeline and blank
boxes for the pictures that have labels such as “Santiago tries out for
Newcastle United.” A word bank is also included for language support,
with connecting words like next, then, and after this.
We created this
role for our Film Circle to give students who learn visually a chance to
work with pictures and to reinforce the other students’ understanding
of the plot during the discussion.
2. The Soundtrack Analyzer:
In
the role of the Soundtrack Analyzer, the student uses a worksheet to
take notes about the bands, songs, and styles of music from the film to
promote group discussion. Apart from that, the Soundtrack Analyzer
relates the style of music to specific scenes in the film.
Thus,
this
role matches the emotions shown in scenes from the film with music
played at those specific moments and shares that information with the
group.
The worksheet used by the Soundtrack Analyzer includes a graphic
organizer containing certain scenes juxtaposed against a word bank
describing emotions and musical styles, along with sentence starters
about music to help take notes.
3. The Vocabulary Enricher:
The
Vocabulary Enricher role is taken from Fink’s (2011) lesson plan, and
the task is to classify key words from the film and share them with
members of the group.
As an adaptation for lower-level students, we used
a handout with circles representing various themes from the film, and
the student had to discover words related to each theme.
For example, if
the concept on the handout is football, the student might write the
words player, sports agent, and football. The English subtitle function
helps the Vocabulary Enricher to both listen and see new words, which
helps the student complete the worksheet.
The new vocabulary is shared
with the group members, who benefit from learning new vocabulary in
context.
4. The Questioner:
Another
role from Fink (2011) is the Discussion Director, which we call the
Questioner, a role that directs the student to create questions for
members of the group.
The Questioner asks questions to get information
and promote group discussion about the film. As an adaptation for
lower-level students,
we gave the Questioner a graphic organizer showing
different parts of the film and a list of topics to help form
questions, as well as a guide to create basic questions and start a
conversation, such as the sentence starters “I think ________” and “It
seemed that ________.”
5. The Checker:
As
the name indicates, the Checker evaluates the contributions of each
group member. We found this role to be very important in our context
since students need structure and accountability in order to work in
groups without direct teacher supervision.
On a worksheet, the Checker
completes specific information about how the group worked and notes the
strengths and weaknesses of each member’s participation in the group
discussion.
The Checker uses a worksheet to check the accuracy of other
group members’ observations, including a graphic organizer and sentence
starters related to the film’s main ideas.
The Checker is responsible
for participating in group discussions to get sufficient speaking
practice, and he or she also has to use notes and the worksheet to give
oral feedback to group members. This role promotes peer checking and
autonomous learning.
Pre-viewing activity:
As
a preparation activity, we studied the textbook vocabulary and
activities related to sports; this preparation helped the students
understand the film better when they watched it.
Students were also
pre-taught\ vocabulary from the film through pictures and examples, and
they were told that specific words would be useful during the project. A
cloze activity was useful to pre teach the vocabulary:
Students were
given a script of the movie trailer where several deleted words were
replaced by blank lines. As they watched the trailer, the students had
to read and listen in order to fill in the missing words.
This listening
activity helps prepare them to understand the film when they watch it
and gives them written support for some of the concepts they will
encounter in the film. Since the students are at a low level of
proficiency, this extra support is necessary to make the language they
will hear comprehensible.
Viewing activity:
In
the second class, the students watch the film with English
subtitles,
which were used to support students’ listening with a written
representation of the words. While watching, each student fulfills his
or her assigned role and pays attention to the language and the concepts
of the film.
Students will be watching and listening for different
information that will be shared later during group work. Although we did
not expect our students to understand every word of the film, we did
expect them to understand the plot, the major scenes, the order of
events, the characters, and the emotions associated with each event.
This expectation was communicated explicitly so that students did not
waste valuable class time trying to understand every detail. This
approach resulted in added practice in the important skills of reading
and listening for main ideas.
Post-viewing activity:
In
the third and last class the students worked in their groups, taking
turns to present the information they gathered and participate in a
discussion of the film they had seen.
The discussion was very basic,
often with students asking and answering simple questions or reading
their observations out loud.
As our students progress, we hope to make
the activity appropriate for a more advanced level by taking out some of
the supports and encouraging students to use more creativity in their
roles to express ideas and opinions, and to enrich the overall
discussion.
Results of the Film Circle project:
To
determine the effectiveness of the Film Circle for addressing our
classroom needs and promoting oral interaction in English, we
evaluated
qualitative data from the students’ completed worksheets,
the teacher
observations, and the students’ reflections on the activity.