Author: Media Awareness Network
Level: Secondary Cycle One and Two
Subject Area: English Language Arts

Description: In this lesson, students develop critical thinking skills to authenticate online information and to recognize bias and hatred on the Internet.

Cross-curricular Competencies	Broad Areas of Learning
To use information To solve problems To exercise critical judgement To adopt effective work methods To use information and communications technologies for learning purposes To work with others To communicate appropriately	Media Literacy 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

Action Research

• Develops a research process to collect data, e.g. researching, interviewing, videotaping, discussing, observing, connecting ideas across disciplines, and using the practical knowledge and experiences of the group

Social Practices of Classroom and Community

• Examines the discourse used to present information in selected spoken, written and media texts

Competency Two: Represents his/her literacy in various media

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

• Uses mixed media and multimedia resources to locate information, do research and communicate with others

Text, Audience, Producer

Textual Features, Codes and Conventions

• Interprets media texts:
• Draws on knowledge of production process and codes and conventions of texts produced
• Explores the codes that construct media texts, e.g. headlines, captions and photographs in newspapers
• 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

Audience and Producer

• Explores self as individual member of audience (use, personal biases, prior experiences) and as part of a larger target audience
• Compares:
• Own values with those presented in media texts
• 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
• Discusses characteristics of producer:
• Explores where, when, why, by and for whom texts are produced

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)
• Applies contextual understanding when meaning breaks down:
• Socio-cultural: draws on understanding of values and beliefs to make sense of incidents, events or message(s)

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
• 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:
• Expresses own interpretation(s) with clarity, openness and confidence

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