What happened?

Over 4 months, 3 schools used nothing but our projects in their English lessons. Using No More Marking’s collaborative judgement system, independent writing assessors found that the average rate of progress was 3.75 times faster than the UK national average.

Not only that, but the 200 pupils involved scored their levels of enjoyment of English as a subject as 50% higher than when they started! Progress and enjoyment, what more can we ask for?

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How did it work?

All three schools received a day of training from us which covered the literacy and digital skills needed. Once the study had started, all teaching was delivered by the class teachers without additional support.

The 200 pupils who took part were given a cold writing task at the start of the research study and another writing task 12 weeks later. These two pieces of writing were then assessed to measure their progress.

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Children filming in the classroom as part of an English literacy project

Why did it work?

Pupils are very motivated by the experience of creating video which opens them up to understanding the relationship between traditional English skills and digital skills.

This leads to a significant increase in effort and enthusiasm. When digital and traditional are brought together, the average rate of progress in English improves significantly at the same time as developing the 21st century skills that pupils need for success in the future.

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LitFIlmFest research graph

“"...the children planned, directed and then edited – far from perfect but totally their own work. It is also even more impressive that one of the children has complex special needs and never usually participates in group learning activities and is usually very reluctant to verbally interact with his peers; however, he thoroughly enjoyed the filming experience and even hugged the Headteacher to thank her for being part of it too; the child NEVER interacts with the headteacher, which made it all the more magical!"”

Anon,
Year 4 Teacher

The research behind LitFilmFest

In a four month research study supported by the UCL Institute of Education, we worked with 200 KS2 students across three schools to measure the efficacy of our approach.

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