4,000 primary school pupils watch their films premiered on the big screen!
Last week, schools across the country were invited to watch films that they have written and directed in the classroom, at cinema premieres across the country!
The youngsters took part in the LitFilmFest — our free writing and filmmaking competition to increase literacy progress in 7–11 year olds, supported by YouTube Kids, Houses Of Parliament, BBC Good Food and Change.Org. Themes of the movies included plastic pollution, healthy eating, digital safety, and political news reports. Check out one of the winning entries, by pupils at St Andrew’s C of E in South London:
One school from Milton Keynes, Oxley Park Academy, created a Change.Org Petition to accompany their video, aiming to ban single use plastic straws in the UK. They gained over 108,000 signatures in support!
The LitFilmFest events took place in cinemas across the country (Liverpool, York, Sheffield, Bradford and Wirral) with a final screening at the BFI London IMAX on June 18th, where 1,500 pupils saw themselves star on the biggest screen in the country.
Started by primary teacher Dominic Traynor, founder of digital literacy company A Tale Unfolds, the film festival is designed to help teachers radically improve both literacy & digital skills in their classroom at the same time as promoting important social messages. All film projects were free for teachers to use in class.
“We normally base it [our learning] on a book, that’s fiction, and this time it was on a real life problem that we had to try and solve. It sets us a wider challenge to all the world.”
Rupa Huq, MP for Ealing Central and Acton, attended the event to watch a political news report that pupils at Derwentwater Primary, based in her constituency, had created about the condition of school playgrounds.
Dr Huq said: “The children’s level of understanding of the issues, and the way that they gave us context of the situation, is really, really impressive.”
Stephen Wilson, Education and Engagement Content Producer for UK Parliament said: “…technology nowadays is really important for engaging children for learning about all subjects. It’s about speaking to their interests, the things that are relevant to them, their experiences and it’s exciting. What hopefully the pupils using pupil parliament have realised, is that politics is about everybody — it’s about finding solutions to problems that can be local or national and hopefully they’ve got a sense of that, and they’ll be more likely to and more interested in getting involved in politics going forward.”
Teacher Rachel Preece-Dawson, who attended the event with her class from Sheriffhales School, said, “children are the future and if we can educate them about how they can make change and how powerful they are and how strong their voices are then they’ll grow up using their voices and make changes for the world”.
Chiltern Primary School explain how to stay safe online:
For more information about LitFilmFest, contact Dominic Traynor on 07552 601604 or dom@ataleunfolds.co.uk
