Learn to Film, Film to Learn

This academic year, 2010-2011, we will continue to focus on how we can use film in school. The focus will be on learning to film and using film as a way of learning

We will be working alongside filmmaker Savinder Bual who many of you will recognise as having worked with us on many occasions before.

The filmmaking will continue to be planned by children and teachers working together and integrating film into the curriculum of each class.

Camera rolling!

Film crews have been spotted all over Columbia School.


Pupils have been taking active roles in the filming of their documentaries.
Taking turns in their groups, they have been actors, directors, camera operators, sound engineers and boom operators.



These Year 3 pupils have been thinking about how to share what they've learnt about Ancient Greece. They will edit their film with Mark before sharing it with other classes.

Documentary Filmmakers

Mark Levermore has worked alongside pupils in 9 classes to plan their documentaries.

These sessions have been an exciting mix of sharing pupils' film experiences, storyboarding, thinking about locations and props.

This Year 1 class went one step further and began making some of the props for their documentary about where paper comes from.

Big Drawings...

Here are some of the sketches from the Big Draw.

Documentary Film Project

This school year, the search was on for a creative filmmaker to work alongside us to support us making documentary films.

We had a great response from filmmakers and decided to invite 6 for interview.

Three pupils joined us for a very long but successful day of interviewing.


We appointed Mark Levermore to work alongside us this year and work has already started in the planning of the project.


Pupils are joining their teachers in the initial planning meetings with Mark.



The combination of all these minds working together is going to result in some creative and whacky documentary films.

Mark will be working with individual classes to plan in detail at the beginning of February.

The Big Draw

2009's Big Draw has finally arrived at Columbia School!

Pupils are invited into a magical forest world in our middle hall.

They meet forest creatures and exotic forest dwellers.

They are inspired by the sights and scents of a real forest in their school.

Pupils are able to choose the scale in which they draw, some choosing their school sketch books and others working on huge easels or screens.

The Curious Minds Learning Network held their first school council conference on 3rd June at Columbia School.
The KS2 school council representatives from all six Curious Minds schools came together to think about what things support their learning.
Guest speaker Ben Smith (AKA rapper and comedian Doc Brown) opened the conference and spoke passionately to the students about following their interests and talents.


The students then joined in with a series of different activities designed to get them thinking about how they learn best. Students learnt to juggle and build newspaper bridges!
Each student brought a piece of work to illustrate some work they had done at their own school that they particularly enjoyed and understood. These were made into a huge wall and students shared their work with each other.

At the end of the day, students thought about all the different ways they had been learning. They thought about how they like to learn best at school and with their school council colleagues they ordered their ideas.

The exciting and successful day was brought to a close by the Deputy Young Mayor for Tower Hamlets.