Final Score

www.dramaticmedia.net

KS4 (Years 10 - 11)

English

This product is published by Dramatic Media Ltd (Tel: 07624 499688)

'Final Score' consists of a drama in five episodes set in the glamorous world of football and involving the strange disappearance of 'superstar' footballer, Jason Fleming in the run-up to an important match. The emphasis is not entirely on sport, however: there is romance, ambition, mystery, blackmail, match rigging, and a great assortment of characters from under-cover police to a villain known menacingly as 'Armlock'.

The title was used with a group of 25 Year 10 students who are studying media for their GCSE Media coursework. The students each had access to a computer but the title could also be used in pairs or groups on a shared computer. The group watched the beginning of each episode on television so that they were all focused on the same information. They made notes on paper as they watched. After each episode the students reviewed the information they had gathered and tried to predict what they might discover. The students were then told what their task was and returned to their computers to start the program. I initially used a projector to show them how to do this but thereafter they were easily able to start the program. The students were given specific time periods to gather facts and information about the characters and to share this information with a partner before returning to the whole class group for discussion. The discussion drew out the differences between fact and opinion and how bias affected the story. Pupils worked together when making a radio broadcast so that they could discuss what they were doing. They were then matched with another pair of students who had made a broadcast with the opposite slant so they could compare the effect of their choice of statement. This is just one of the many activities in the title and pupils happily followed the episodes and completed the exercises, thus covering most of the writing triplets as well as many speaking and listening exercises, as they tried to discover what had happened to Jason Fleming.