KS4 COURSE OVERVIEW

HEAD OF DEPARTMENT: MRS ELLIS

Subject Conent

From Buffy to Bliss, Friends to Futurama and The Guardian to Galaxy, The Matrix to Match of the Day, Eminem to Emmerdale and Dawson’s Creek to Disney – Media Studies covers a broad range of media. During the course you will study advertising, animation, comics, film, magazines, newspapers, popular music, radio and the internet.

The aim of the course is to analyse and understand the media. We want students to know who makes ‘the media’ and how they do it . We want our students to analyse the messages in the media and how audiences respond to them.

Our students will not only learn to analyse the media , but will have the opportunity to produce their own videos, radio programmes, magazines , web sites and many other media products. All our students will be trained to use DV video cameras and Apple Mac computers to edit video footage.

Scheme of Assessment

• Coursework 50%
• Examination 50%

Candidates are assessed on THREE pieces of Coursework. AT LEAST one of these involves the production of a media text. The coursework folder must be completed by Easter in Year 11. Students also sit a 2½ hour examination at the end of year 11. The examination has two tiers :
Foundation Tier : candidates can achieve up to a C grade
Higher Tier : candidates can achieve from a D grade up to an A*grade
Decisions about the tier of entry for students will be based upon their performance during the course.

Additional Comments

To succeed on and enjoy this course, students must be able to combine critical skills with an imaginative and creative approach to the work. The best Media Studies students are highly motivated and work independently. Students should expect to produce one piece of coursework that will be assessed using GCSE marking criteria every half term during the course.