BYE-CHILD DVD RESOURCE PACK

The Bye-Child DVD resource pack is now in use in schools around the U.K. and has been delivered to many teachers with a one-day in-service course by Bernard MacLaverty and Andrew Bonner.

BUY DVD DIRECT

English teachers have also been attending the in-service days: here’s what one of them wrote…

This was a terrific in-service – engaging and inspiring - led by two former English teachers who have created an excellent resource for the secondary classroom. Should you have the opportunity to attend MacLaverty and Bonner’s development day ‘Poem Into Film Will Go’, fill in the form and go. (The pack is included). If not, buy a copy of the DVD Educational Resource Pack.

Media Studies students and teachers have been getting lots out of the DVD too…

Bye Child has been an ideal text to use in teaching [our] course, for a number of reasons:

1.	As a short film, it is extremely practical… it is very difficult to cover a feature length film in the time available, at the depth necessary. Bye Child is a great length for teaching purposes, yet rich enough to support analysis work across all of the key aspects.
2.	Thematically, the film was interesting and accessible to the pupils. We were able to look at representations of family life, childhood, and the church..
3.	The film provided us with unique opportunities to make connections between the Analysis and the Production units. Andrew Bonner came into school to present the film to the students, and his contribution helped demonstrate the impact of institutional constraints on the construction of meaning in the film. The production processes thus exposed, they were able to understand the text from a production viewpoint, and that understanding could then inform their analysis of the text.
4.	The style of the film lends itself well to analysis at school level. We felt the film was intelligently made, subtle and powerful, yet accessible to the students. The style of the film serves the narrative effectively, which made it appropriate for students relatively new to analysis work.
5.	When in the past we have concentrated on big budget blockbuster films as the main fiction texts, it has been difficult to see the impact of the analysis unit on the students’ production work. That was not the case with Bye Child. Our Advanced Higher students this year are working on a short film which is clearly inspired by Bye Child. It was an aspirational text because the students were able to see and identify with the process of finding an idea and bringing it to production