Moving Image Education in the Early Years

Today, our lives are immersed in screen media and children seem at ease with this multi-modal world, assimilating the numerous skills required to operate within this communication medium. This then raises the question; how well do our educational establishments prepare children to become discerning consumers who can decode multimodal texts, make informed decisions and use them as effective literacy and communication tools within society?

To obtain an answer we must examine the impact of this new era on our education system, exploring these childhood experiences, challenging our attitudes and assumptions to recognise the positive attributes and potential of these resources, giving them status in the learning environments we co-construct with children.

By focusing on multi-modal texts alongside traditional ones moving image education explores the often neglected and richly expressive language of film, enabling children to engage, analyse, create and make informed responses. However, it is not solely about literacy; it maps out rich cross-curricular learning journeys created through relevant contexts, providing opportunities for learners to construct and extend their thinking.

Over the past 18 months Mairi Flood, a teacher and Scottish Screen Lead Practitioner, has been exploring these issues with educators, children and their families in a number of early years setting in Angus. The culmination of the project is the creation of a new Scottish Screen web resource for educators.

This session shares an overview of the web resource and examples of learning journeys travelled by children and practitioners linking them both to the four capacities outlined in Curriculum for Excellence and the needs of the modern learner.

More information on Mairi and her work can be found in Early Years Matters Issue 12 
http://www.scottishscreen.com

Mairi Flood is an Early Years teacher on secondment to Scottish Screen to research and develop a model of moving image education in Scotland for early years children aged between 3 and 7 years.

During the past 17 months she has worked in a number of early years settings in Angus with pupils and practitioners to develop active learning strategies to deliver MIE.

Mairi is currently collating her research and writing the model that will be available to practitioners later this year.

Prior to this she worked as a nursery teacher for 11 years. Her interest in MIE started while she was exploring the potential of visual learning and communication methods to support all pupils in a fully inclusive nursery setting.

Her other interests include, children as partners/co-constructed learning, popular culture and its impact on learning and engaging and motivating boys.