“Miss, are we watching a film today?”

That all-too-familiar question, and the hysteria it brings when the response is “yes”, is something many teachers will be familiar with at this point in the term.

However, when film becomes an integral part of your teaching style, the response and the impact can be far more powerful than just as an end-of-term treat.

And, in particular, the use of film with SEND students can completely transform teaching and learning.

Take Shakespeare’s Macbeth, for example. My GCSE SEND students find this text particularly challenging. However, when we watch a film adaptation alongside the reading of the play, it takes on a whole new level of understanding.

It allows them to visualise what is happening and many of the film versions are adapted in a way that links directly to the written text. For SEND students, they are then able to return to the text and understand it in a whole new light.

It enables them to translate the language as they are able to picture the scene and deduce meaning because of this. One of the major advantages is that students can place key events in order and remember when they occur as they recognise these from the viewing of the film.

Using films in lessons with SEND pupils

Of course, there are still challenges. Many SEND students can lose focus quickly and the language comprehension remains challenging.

As such,ensuring that SEND students have something to focus on can make all the difference: otherwise, they may just see it as a relaxing lesson and won’t pay attention to the underlying meanings or moral of the story.

One way of doing this is giving them a set of key questions to answer, and pre-warning them that they will share these at the end can help to maintain their concentration.

Often a planning sheet supports this with an explanation of the task they will be asked to complete at the end.

This has been especially useful when studying Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

The theme they were to focus on was poverty. They were given a set of cards with the particular scene in which poverty was a key factor. This way they knew what they were looking out for beforehand, making it far easier for them to grasp when the theme was displayed.

Prior to this, we had only read the written text and it was clear that they just couldn’t recognise and select examples.

However, once they had seen a movie depicting poverty visually, it bought the text to life and they have since completed some fantastic pieces about the way poverty affected Victorian England and why Dickens chose this as such a major element of the novella.

Thinking outside the books

However, it isn’t just in English lessons that film can have such an impact.

In geography the same group of SEND students were studying a unit about natural disasters. When it came to tsunamis, I found a whole range of documentaries that focused on why they occur, but none that showed the wider impact.

So I showed them the film The Impossible. The students said afterwards that they felt as if they had actually been there and could describe how difficult the situation must have been.

The impact of the film left such a lasting impression on the SEND students and further demonstrated the power of film and how far it has come.

The success of using film like this has meant that we have launched an extracurricular film club that is now attended by lots of SEND students. We choose films that we can supplement with resources to help further the learning, understanding and engagement.

This has been a really powerful approach and our SEND students absolutely love it. So how can you do something similar? Here are my five tips for using film in lessons when teaching children with SEND. 

6 top tips for making the most of films in lessons 

1. Be brave

Go for the unexpected. Students love to be shocked by the complex issues that you are willing to discuss. The lines of discussion these topics can bring up and emotions they can evoke are amazing, and the students gain so much from this.

2. Check, check, check

Always speak to the class beforehand about what you will be showing them. In the case of film, forewarned is forearmed, and in my experience students have responded much better and been more willing to push themselves to watch something they may find difficult if they can consider it beforehand.

3. Don’t always go feature-length

It is also worthwhile using short clips - five minutes is usually a good length if there is a simple message you want to get across.

4. Have structure

Make sure the students have something to focus on. Otherwise, they just see it as a relaxing lesson and don’t pay attention to the underlying meanings or moral of the story.

5 High frequency

If you are going to use film as a teaching method, use it often. Students tend to take it far more seriously if they see it as the norm and not simply a “treat”.

6. Use a legitimate source

This goes for any use of film, but make sure you are streaming legally through a legitimate source. We have a subscription with Into Film+, which means we’re not in breach of any copyright rules. 

Gemma Brown is Sendco at Cartmel Priory CofE School in Cumbria