MACE seeking to provide films in the classroom

MACE, the East and West Midlands film archive, is working with teachers to develop web resources for classroom teaching .     

In September MACE's access archivist, Richard Shenton started to explore MACE's collections with Susan Billington, a year 4 teacher at Inglehurst Junior School, which is situated in the New Parks area of Leicester.   

Drawing on Susan's teaching experience and Richard's knowledge of MACE's collections the intention was to select titles and develop lessons plans around them.  This part of the project has been incredibly successful as almost fifteen titles have been identified and accompanying lesson plans have been written.  

The next stage is to select those 'packages' that might work best on the internet and pilot them in a number of primary schools, of which Inglehurst will definitely be one.  If you are interested in getting involved please get in touch with Richard Shenton.  

In the meantime Richard has also been working with a small group of secondary school  history teachers.  Convened by the School of Education at the University of Nottingham the focus group has selected two items from ITV's regional news collection held by MACE.  The teachers are now in the process of developing a series of lessons that will revolve around these titles.  Once this element of the project has been completed the packages will be piloted in secondary schools before they appear on the web.  Again, if you are interested in getting involved please speak to Richard Shenton.   

All resources created by these project will be uploaded on to MACE's site for use by teachers and learners across the UK and beyond.

These projects, which have been made possible by the support received via MLA East Midlands' Strategic Commissioning programme, all build on the work that Richard did during the 2006/2007 academic year with Year 1 and 2 teachers at Bonington Infants and Nursery School in Bulwell, Nottingham.  The experience gained during that year has acted as the foundations for this intensive work that will provide easy to use resources for the classroom teacher.

To find out more about MACE's activities and to view archive clips being used in the project click here.

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