Last week, as 100 students were out enjoying an adventurous tour of Spain with our fantastic/maverick music teacher, I decided to set my year 10 class another moving image review.

Having already prepped the students some months ago for several creative writing tasks, we completed the unit in four lessons.

First lesson: Recapping ingredients of a review, watch 30 minutes up to when the big top crashes. Set homework of planning for fourth lesson.
Second lesson: Recap story so far, compare note taking so far. Watch remaining 30 minutes.
Third lesson: Use planning material to plan a thematic review.
Fourth lesson: Write assessment in controlled conditions.

The notes I gave the students on planning took into account their prior training on thematic planning. For this essay I suggested selecting a combination of themes and scenes to move away from a simple chronological analysis of the film.

This is an example essay extended that we analysed in the third lesson.

These are the notes that we took.

They aimed to inform absent students (who were expected to see the film regardless) and to model some note-taking.

Here is an example plan of the review.

And, finally, here is an example of the review written from the plan. Used for modelling purposes in terms of linking to the criteria, and seeking for improvement.

Finally, you can purchase the DVD from here:

I may very well post some example essays on here, too.