These posts document my little journey of discovery when auditing and strengthening our A Level provision to enrich the course and challenge our more experienced students who have taken Media at GCSE. I'm also looking at developing our GCSE to make the most of our three year KS4.

As the summer looms with its welcoming hug of silenced alarms and car boots without piles of neglected exercise books, it befits the moment to reflect. Aside from the global pandemic, return from maternity leave and a whole host of other fun extras in the mix, this year has really been a transformative year for my outlook on teaching and my practice. I have my awesome faculty, largely, to thank for this, and the strategies I have learned from English teaching have already begun to seep into my Media curriculum planning.

So, to consolidate where we are so far, and to work out what I will spend some of my summer doing, here is the curriculum design and approach so far. Just for reference, I teach in South Wales and therefore run WJEC for both GCSE and A Level, most similar to Eduqas in England.

KS4

We operate on a three year KS4 system in my school, with four hours a fortnight allocated to options choices.While we were initially teaching the course over the three years, I decided to scrap that in favour of a foundation year (which you can read more about here). This provides a foundation of understanding in all the key concepts, while giving us the freedom to choose and use as many texts as we can. This means, when entering Y10 and approaching the examination texts, students are more confident in their analytical approach and can apply key concepts to them more readily. This, in theory, should cut down the amount of time needed on each of the key texts and allow for more focus on exam skills towards the end of the Y11, coursework and developing more sophisticated understanding through conceptual exploration, especially with a wealth of texts from Y9 in their knowledge banks. 

Y9, therefore, looks like this:

And Y10/Y11 look like this (this needs some tweaking):

I follow, in general, the recommended amount of weeks from the exam board, but not necessarily the content they suggest to cover in each week. This is because mine will need more time on some things and less time on others. The exam board also suggests a two-week introduction to the course before diving in with texts and not really coming up for air. This has meant a steep learning curve for some students and in some cases has put them off. This softer approach means they approach the dreaded exam content with a bit more confidence and expertise.

KS5 TRANSITION

Transition has been another big change for us: now that we have a mix of students who have taken and not taken the GCSE, we need to provide a range of resources to support all levels in preparation for KS5. Using Google Classroom, we have put together this programme. Each task includes the resources and an audio or video guide to both talk them through the task and provide a more personable experience. The aim here is simply to increase confidence so the learning curve is not so daunting. 

KS5

I find the A Level to be comparatively sparse to the GCSE; there are fewer texts studied, but in more depth. After looking at Band 5 responses and seeing them often characterised by having clear knowledge of a range of additional media texts, genres, movements and concepts, I wanted to include some of this enrichment in the programme of study in order to provide some media cultural capital. This would hopefully help us move away from the 'teach to exam' approach that is so easily adopted. I use a graphic planner to organise unit ideas, adopting the shape of an egg timer to depict the broad-to-laser focused approach we are planning. The central text is taught through clear, precise direct instruction with retrieval and heavily guided study. This is short and sharp, and surrounded by looser, broader approaches for context (pre-taught) and application to context (post key text). This balances giving students confidence that they have covered the key texts, but the enjoyment and education of a broader range of media. The plan for the film unit at AS is shown below:

We also provide 'reading lists' for each unit and text type. These are a range of rich texts that are a starting point for students. We review and update these with student input regularly, both to keep up to date and to show students what a dynamic subject media is, with ever-changing content to explore. This is a sample of the music video list, and is a work in progress. Some of these will be looked at explicitly in class, and others are simply for enjoyment or case study material for student online folios. 

ENRICHMENT

The emphasis in enrichment is strong both at KS4 and KS5. Students are expected to produce their own academic writing from Y9, through either a blog, saved private document, video essay or podcast. Form next year, we have the following additional options:

Department blog: each week, we spotlight a student post and share it via Twitter for extra exposure. This allows for conversations about content online, sharing data and opinions, editing and copyright etc. It also creates a sense of professionalism and ownership from an early point in students' media careers. 

Podcast: We are launching a weekly podcast for students that will be a mix of episodes covering study content delivered by teachers, and students discussing areas of interest to them as well as discussing practical projects they produce. It will allow students to have a revision resource and also contribute towards a piece of professional media. We are hosting this via Anchor, as it's free and easily distributed. 

Really Serious Film Club: We have a classic film club in the works, run through Google Classroom. This will hopefully cultivate an audience for Film Studies in the future, and will allow students to explore the rich wealth of films on offer beyond the specification.

The MEAs: The Media Excellence Awards are (fingers crossed) going to run this year, and potentially be opened up in the future to primary schools. This will allow for practical skills to be developed with none of the restrictions the exam boards have to enforce. It's also just a bit of fun!

NEXT STEPS

We have been working a lot on research led teaching approaches in English, and it is clear that some of these will translate well to Media Studies. I hope to take the work of Kate Jones, Doug Lemov and Tom Sherrington and use them to strengthen some focused and precise teaching of the set texts which will free up some more time for diverse study. We have certainly started the journey and I am excited to see where it will take us! Please share any thoughts you have or what you are doing in your centres, and thanks for stopping by!