About the Live Action Teaching Kit

The information, tutorials and lesson plans in this kit have been designed as a resource to support teachers with little or no basic knowledge about film and television production and as a resource for students. This kit includes key concepts for visual literacy and multiliteracy teaching that can be used to develop analytical, critical and creative skills relevant to a wide range of KLA’s topics and themes from early primary to senior secondary.

If students are to understand, analyse and enjoy television and other media they need skills of a higher level than those required to speak and write. Media images and sound tracks contain complex languages, which we learn gradually from viewing and listening. Learning to become visually literate is a crucial part of children’s education in helping them decode and use media language in much the same way as they learn verbal and written language.

Visual Literacy can be defined as the ability to “read” and understand visual images and codes. It can be used as the fundamental building block towards media comprehension by making a learner conscious of visual processes and articulate in using them. When a person has developed a set of visual abilities through seeing and sensory experiences, and when they are able to discriminate and interpret visible actions, objects, patterns and symbols in the environment, then they are becoming visually literate. It is through the creative use of these abilities that a visually literate person is able to comprehend and communicate.

It is important that students become not just critical users of media but that they experience being a "writer” as well: that they are creators, not just consumers of media. This can be as basic as creating a script or storyboard or if cameras are available, taking skills to the next level and developing the project into a video.

This kit contains all of the information and activities required for students to learn how to make videos of their own as well as other media products.