SMSC Resources

Spike Milligan once described a tense wartime experience. During a dark and sinister night, with the possibility of an imminent enemy raid, his patrol nervously scanned the headland to which they had been assigned. With tension thick in the air, they edged forward. ‘Suddenly’, he wrote, ‘nothing happened!’

I sometimes wonder whether ‘suddenly nothing happened’ might describe an occasion when we have shown a video which we had confidently expected to have a dramatic impact on an RE class. Come on, be honest!

In the far-off days before Powerpoint – or even video! – when the latest wizardry might have been a slide show, I would sometimes start my presentation with a picture that was deliberately upside down. This was on the basis that since most slide talks I had ever attended had featured the embarrassment of a key slide seeming to have come from Australia, it was best to get it out of the way now! Somehow, the odd 14-year old offering to stand on his head to interpret the picture for the rest of the class wouldn’t have helped! For any presentation to gain maximum impact it must be meticulously prepared.

Perhaps we are too willing to embrace the benefits of modern technology without accepting its demands. In my experience, although we should always allow for the unexpected, the best responses from showing a video are usually predictable. They rely on the teacher’s skill in presentation as well as the programme on the screen.

If we plan to show a video, in the hope of something actually happening to the knowledge or understanding within a key theme, we need to do as much – if not more – advance preparation than for any other lesson. There’s really no quick fix! The videos you might have in your RE cupboard may be real gems, but they certainly weren’t made with class 10R in mind. And its producer may seem blissfully unaware that what they really wanted was for the lesson to end so that they could go out and kick a ball around.

Even modest videos are expensive to make. With squeezed educational budgets – and with RE often being the Cinderella department when it comes to budget allocation - HODs are very limited in terms of what can be bought. Consequently, producers are unlikely to get sufficient returns to justify dedicated quality productions honed to SACRE guidelines or the Specifications of your chosen examinations board. Their videos may therefore be produced with more than one audience in mind. Thankfully, there are exceptions but you know your class far better than any producer so you must select, present and interpret what you show in the way that best fits in with your own needs.

But we all have our own style, our own ‘take’ on the way to present a topic, our own agenda of what to include and what to omit – regardless of the specifics of the syllabus we follow. All the more reason not to hand precious class time to a video producer who doesn’t know the class, probably has no idea of the syllabus being taught and will have made his video for purposes other than helping out with your RE curriculum.

So, where does this lead us? There are some very obvious golden rules – so obvious, that I hesitate to list them. However, here goes:

• Always, always preview the tape in advance. Don’t just accept the descriptive blurb on the cover. Don’t even accept uncritically recommendations from colleagues. Neither their style, their approach nor their individual agenda will be identical to yours. Nor will they know your class as well as you do.
• Recognise that the video was made for an audience other than your own class 10R. I like the story of a traveller who asked the way to the nearest pub only to be told "Well, if I were going there I wouldn’t be starting from here". Every video starts from a given point, an assumption of the level of knowledge, understanding and ability of its audience. Your class might be somewhere else, or you might want them to arrive somewhere different. The most effective use of video will rely on your own introduction and what you say immediately after switching it off. And don’t be afraid to stop the video in the middle to add you own specific teaching point or to explain something that your pupils might need reinforcing.
• Encourage pupils to take notes, perhaps for a discussion afterwards. Key, subject-specific words can be written on the board as the video plays – or given out on a follow-up sheet.
• Don’t necessarily show the whole video. Some sequences might not be ideal for your class. Skip them, come into the video late or leave it early. DVDs with ‘chapter headings’ are specially useful for this. Some of our own videos are also available in shorter versions to facilitate class use.
• Always plan time to allow your class to ask questions, discuss or debate after the screening. Try wherever possible to set them an assignment, either in class or for homework based specifically on what they have learnt from the video.
• Remember, kids aren’t stupid! If you’re using the video as a babysitter or to save you the bother of planning anything else, they will see through this. Their perception of you - and what you are teaching - will suffer as a consequence. Make the viewing a carefully integrated part of your teaching on that topic, prepare thoroughly and follow up carefully, alert to where the video may have led them.