I have talked about this many times before – films are some of the most powerful resources you can use to engage children.  They are amazingly effective with those often harder to reach groups….boys, EAL, SEN.  I like to make collections of the films I have used that have worked across age ranges and I will share some of the best here.

I find film really useful at the start of an English unit of work to activate schema, encouraging children to bring their own experience to the text or genre that I will eventually share.  Sometimes I use clips of full length films, but often it is short animations that work best.

I use the snipping tool or my smartnotebook camera to capture still images and create tick sheets of key words and corresponding pictures for those with little English so they are beginning to understand and focus upon the essential vocabulary.  These pictures are also great to use to support the creative writing of those who have literacy difficulties, giving them prompts and structure for their work.

A brilliant film for assembly or a PHSCE session is ‘For the birds’, where a strange looking new bird tries to make friends with a a rather unkind flock with hilarious outcomes…

‘Defective Detective’ is great for inference.  The detective’s overactive imagination leads him to believe terrible crimes are being committed in the flat above him…

‘Dangle’ is a great film for discussing ‘What would you do?’ and for using prediction…’What is at the end of the red rope?’

‘La Luna’ is a beautiful animation from Pixar that introduces the idea of mythology and how early man believed the world worked.  This works well with Oliver Jeffers’ books ‘How to catch a star’ and ‘The way back home’ – ideal for a topic on stars or night time in KS1.

My absolute favourite (which I have done an entire blog post on already!) is ‘Francis’.  A dark and spooky tale only suitable for the oldest KS2 children, but is fabulous at looking for the signs an author gives you to build up tension, anticipation and dread….

Following the spooky theme is ‘Alma’, which is more suitable for the rest of KS2, where spooky dolls have eyes that seem to  follow you…..

‘Home Sweet Home’ is the bittersweet story of a house that longs to be elsewhere and his journey with friends across beautiful, yet rugged and host landscapes.  This lends itself to creative writing and stories of epic journeys…

I will finish this post on a non-fiction note…’Dragons – a fantasy made real’ is an amazing stimulus for information texts on dragons and links beautifully to the talk for writing work of Pie Corbett…