Author: Jane Tallim, Media Awareness Network
Level: Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Moral Education, Drama, Physical Education and Health

Description: This lesson helps students understand the different types of "cop shows" that appear on television. Students will create their own pilots for television cop shows, based on information provided in class, and will learn about the differences between the constructed reality of these programs and law enforcement in real life through class discussion with a police officer.

Cross-curricular Competencies	Broad Areas of Learning
To use information To exercise critical judgement To be creative To adopt effective work methods To use information and communications technologies for learning purposes To work with others To communicate appropriately	Media Literacy Career Planning and Entrepreneurship Citizenship and Community Life

This lesson satisfies the following English Language Arts Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

Competency One: Uses language/talk to communicate and learn

Production Process:

• Uses strategies to generate, clarify and expand ideas
• Explores a structure that will help the audience to receive the intended meaning:
• Selects an organizational structure suitable to function of text
• Examines the relationship between context, producer of text and familiar, intended audience to identify potential problems in communication:
• Interprets audience’s expectations to determine which features are most important
• Analyzes the characteristics of the audience
• Adopts a stance to topic and audience
• Chooses a level of language or register most suitable to the context
• Uses linguistic structures and features to communicate her/his meaning and to influence the audience in the manner intended:
• Prepares several drafts, if the context warrants it, and rehearses with peers as a simulated audience
• Uses language with the degree of precision and semantic and syntactic awareness required by the context
• Selects relevant devices such as emotional or rational appeals to influence the audience
• Experiments with intonation patterns, pitch and volume for desired effects
• Uses stylistic features and devices such as repetition, parody, exaggeration and imagery for emphasis, interest and special effect, and to create a personal style
• Presents the spoken text to audience
• Uses selected feedback to revise own texts
• In postproduction discussions, evaluates the spoken texts of others, using agreed-upon criteria

Competency Two: Represents his/her literacy in various media

Production Process

Preproduction

• Immerses self in the text type to be produced in order to deconstruct some of its textual features, codes and conventions:
• Analyzes samples of text type
• Carries out a content analysis or inquiry into some aspect of media text
• Rehearses production process:
• Creates criteria for guiding production, e.g. features of an effective poster or advertisement
• Discusses the purpose, context, target audience and their needs
• Decides about medium, mode and code
• Writes script, storyboard or rough draft
• Shares draft with classmates and intended audience
• Gives and seeks specific feedback from others in the class

Production

• Communicates information, experiences, points of view and personal responses to a familiar audience
• Inter-relates the characteristics of media text in a specific context drawing on:
• Specific communication strategies and resources
• Images, symbols, signs, logos and/or words to communicate meaning(s)/message(s)
• Knowledge of structures and features of other media texts brought into own productions
• Reviews and edits text to focus on meaning(s)/message(s)

Postproduction

• Presents text to intended audience
• Evaluates production process and text produced, with group and individually

Text, Audience, Producer

Textual Features, Codes and Conventions

• Identifies and deconstructs codes:
• Captions, credits and titles
• Dialogue and voiceovers
• Lighting and sound
• Camera language
• Symbolic
• Narrative
• Sequencing
• Colour
• Interprets media texts:
• Uses media strategies to focus understanding: freezing frames, replaying the text, watching only the images, isolating sound
• Draws on knowledge of production process and codes and conventions of texts produced
• Constructs message(s) and meaning(s) using familiar codes from media texts
• Identifies functions of media discourse: to entertain, to persuade, to promote, to inform
• Makes connection(s) between images, signs, symbols, pictures and printed text and meaning
• Confirms, by talking with peers and teacher, that a media text can contain more than one message
• Identifies and discusses some of the ways in which pictures, illustrations, symbols and images enhance the message
• Explores the use of “formulas”
• Recognizes purpose and function of stereotypes
• Examines ways in which bias occurs in various media texts

Representation

• Identifies some aspects of representation and exclusion, i.e. deconstructs:
• Age, gender, family, culture, race, location, such as: portrayals of teens, depictions of a student’s neighbourhood in local news
• Heroes, heroines and idols such as: role(s) in popular culture and how they are constructed, publicized and exploited by the media.

Audience and Producer

• Explores self as individual member of audience (use, personal biases, prior experiences) and as part of a larger target audience
• Chooses texts to read, interpret and produce based on interest(s), purpose(s), and preference
• Compares:
• Own values with those presented in media texts
• Different uses s/he makes of media texts
• Own responses, reactions and consumption of media texts with those of peers and other age groups
• Examines how media target specific audiences:
• Identifies ways that different familiar audiences use the media
• Identifies and generalizes aspects of familiar audiences
• Identifies subjects of interest for specific audiences
• Explores how the structures and features of texts shape meaning for an audience
• Explains how own productions are adapted to interests of familiar audience chosen
• Discusses characteristics of producer:
• Explores where, when, why, by and for whom texts are produced
• Considers the stance of different media texts on issues and concerns of interest to young adolescents
• Explores production choices made in own texts

Competency Three: Reads and listens to written, spoken and media texts

Reader’s Stance: Constructing a Reading of a Text

• Focuses on the world of the text to construct an aesthetic reading of text
• Focuses on making sense of information in a text to construct an efferent reading, e.g. reads print and visual information with the intention of remembering details/examples and/or of following instructions, rereads to verify meaning(s) s/he is making, relates to personal experience and prior knowledge
• Focuses on the relationship between own world and world of the text to construct an interpretive reading, e.g. elaborates on story world or information in text, connects literature or nonfiction to life experience(s), recognizes familiar textual features, codes and conventions that confirm own meaning(s)/message(s)

Reading Strategies: Text Grammars (Structures, Features, Codes and Conventions)

• Constructs meaning(s)/message(s) by reinvesting her/his knowledge of the text as social construct, i.e. language-in-use:
• Draws on cues in familiar structures, features, codes and conventions to make sense of texts
• Identifies connotation and denotation of words, images and their referents
• Makes connections between conventions of a familiar text type/genre and own response(s) /interpretation(s)
• Examines the constructed world of narrative text: uses her/his response(s) as the basis for connecting own meaning(s) to the conventions used to plot/construct the story

Reader, Text, Context: Interpreting Texts

• Interprets the text for a familiar audience by drawing associations between own world of personal experiences and knowledge and the world of the text by considering:
• Own characteristics as a reader and the constructed world of a text, e.g. comparison of own values and experiences with those presented in the text; issues, ideas or questions the text raises for her/him; experience with similar texts; attitudes towards subject/topic/character; personal interests
• Predictions and inferences about the view of the world presented in text
• Initial, tentative impressions about the statement(s) or view of the world the author/narrator /producer is making
• Features, codes and conventions of known text types/genres
• Texts s/he has written and produced that have similar structures, features, codes and conventions
• With guidance, examines text in its literary and/or socio-cultural context:
• Identifies features, codes and conventions used to achieve a recognized social purpose and/or function and/or effect and impact on self as reader, e.g. in a popular television commercial, in a humorous text
• Explores different interpretations of the same event/idea/subject/topic in two sources and their impact on self as reader, e.g. current events in newspapers, on television, or radio
• Connects, in a trial-and-error fashion, her/his understanding of some characteristics of narrator/writer/producer to what s/he notices about the view of the world presented in the text, e.g. reads “between the lines” to locate apparent values/beliefs of a character/narrator in a story, understands the intent of a fast food ad, sees that an opinion excludes certain points of view
• Communicates interpretation(s) of a text in an individual voice, referring to prior experience, own reading profile and understanding of texts as social constructs:
• Follows a process to compose, i.e. writes or produces own interpretation(s) of a text
• Interprets the view of the world in the text in different media, including mixed media, for a familiar audience
• Expresses own interpretation(s) with clarity, openness and confidence
• Uses an inquiry process and action research in collaboration with peers to organize and report information in nonfiction and/or popular texts of interest to young adolescents for a familiar audience

Other subject-specific programs

Moral Education

Competency One: Constructs a moral frame of reference

Puts life situations and moral references into perspective:

• Makes connections between meaningful situations, their requirements, the influences at play, and the presence of known values or social precepts
• Identifies his/her own moral references
• Explores the diversity of beliefs, customs, visions of human beings, values and social precepts related to the same situation
• Identifies differences, similarities and tensions between different opinions and viewpoints

Deliberates on the elements of a moral frame of reference:

• With others, looks for the words to define moral references
• Compares definitions, opinions and viewpoints
• Questions values and social precepts, their validity and how they are applied depending on the context
• Considers the effects of diverse visions of human beings on community life

Competency Two: Takes a reflective stance on moral issues:

Identifies the ethical issues of a situation

• Describes the situation
• Explains how and why the situation poses a moral or ethical problem
• Identifies the consequences of the problem on himself/herself, on others and on the environment
• Draws upon a variety of information sources and the viewpoints of experts
• Analyzes the tensions that exist among different viewpoints, opinions, visions of human beings, values and social precepts
• Situates himself/herself in relation to the problem
• Expresses feelings generated by the problem
• Considers the viewpoints of classmates and those primarily concerned by the problem, and takes cultural references into account
• Identifies the reasons put forth in support of opinions and viewpoints
• Highlights the underlying visions of human beings and the social precepts and the values in question
• Explains the differences that exist

Imagines possible options and their consequences

• Proposes possible options and considers those of others
• Examines the consequences on himself/herself, on others and on society
• Makes a summary of the options and their possible consequences

Translates his/her choices into action

• Uses criteria to evaluate different options
• Expresses his/her preferred choice and gives the reasons and emotional factors behind his/her decision
• Delineates the individual and collective responsibilities entailed in his/her choice of options
• Explores individual and group ways of taking action

Drama

Competency 1: Creates Dramatic Works

Uses ideas to create a dramatic work

• Is open to a stimulus for creation
• Is receptive to ideas, images, emotions, sensations or impressions evoked by the stimulus
• Keeps records of his/her ideas
• Explores various ways of conveying creative ideas through dramatic action
• Chooses dramatic actions that hold his/her interest and envisions his/her creative project

Uses elements of dramatic language and technique

• Experiments, through improvisation, with elements of performance, playwriting and theatricality
• Makes use of his/her dramatic experiences
• Chooses the most meaningful elements in relation to his/her creative intention and perfects methods for using these elements

Organizes his/her dramatic creation

• Experiments with ways of linking dramatic scenes
• Organizes the improvisation material based on the creative intention
• Reviews his/her dramatic choices and makes adjustments
• Refines certain elements of his/her creation, if necessary

Shares his/her dramatic creation experience

• Analyzes his/her creative intention and process
• Keeps records of his/her ideas
• Identifies the important elements of his/her experience and its characteristics
• Identifies what he/she has learned and the methods used

Becomes familiar with the dramatic content of the work

• Immerses himself/herself in the work and identifies elements of dramaticlanguage
• Recognizes the meaning and, if applicable, the historicalaspects that may affect the performance
• Experiments with variousways of conveying the dramatic content through performance strategies

Competency 2: Performs Dramatic Works

Applies elements of dramatic language

• Experiments with elements of performance, playwriting or theatricality that are relevant to the character and action
• Makes use of sensory and kinesthetic experiences
• Adapts selected elements of dramatic language to bring out the character and action
• Links the dramatic actions in keeping with the structure of the work

Respects the conventions regarding unified performance

• Listens to others
• Puts established conventions into practice and adjusts his/her performance to that of the others

Becomes familiar with the expressive nature of the work

• Experiments with the expressive elements of the work
• Adapts these elements to the performance or to the author’s or creator’s intention, if applicable
• Makes use of expressive resources while considering the nature of the work and its communicative purpose

Shares his/her performance experience

• Analyzes his/her communicative purpose and progress
• Identifies the important elements of his/her experience and its characteristics
• Identifies what he/she has learned and the methods used

Physical Education and Health

The Cycle One program states:

The messages conveyed by the media can have major repercussions on the behaviour of adolescents. Therefore, it is important that students be encouraged to maintain a critical distance with regard to the media. For example, during a big sports event, certain networks show violent images involving the athletes. Reports on doping, which some athletes resort to, raise ethical questions about respecting rules and about honesty and fair play. Advertising uses an infinite amount of female body images to demonstrate the effects of products that enable you to obtain the perfect body with no physical effort. This sometimes contradictory information cannot help but challenge students, who must exercise critical judgment when they situate this information in relation to the various contexts in which they develop the subject-specific competencies.

The broad area of learning Media Literacy is thus part of this program.