Quebec Competencies Chart - Alcohol Myths

Author: MediaSmarts
Level: Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Moral Education, Physical Education and Health
Lesson Link: Alcohol Myths

Description: In this lesson, students explore positive messages about drinking that are promoted and reinforced in ads for alcohol. A key component of this exploration includes understanding the consequences of drinking – the negative side of alcohol use that is seldom alluded to in alcohol ads. Prior to the lesson, students read an article on alcohol advertising and answer a series of questions about the gap between the truth about alcohol use and the messages advertisers want consumers to believe. In class, they discuss seven common myths about drinking and the advertising strategies used by the industry to perpetuate these myths. In groups, students research topics about alcohol use and the alcohol industry and create their own parody ads that deliver "the truth" about drinking.

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

Competency Two: Represents his/her literacy in various media

Production Process

Preproduction

• Negotiates text type to be produced
• Manipulates visual elements to build skills for later production activities
• 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

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

• Uses different available technologies in order to construct own texts
• Uses mixed media and multimedia resources to locate information, do research and communicate with others

Text, Audience, Producer

Textual Features, Codes and Conventions

• Identifies and deconstructs codes:
  • Captions, credits and titles
  • Symbolic
  • Colour
• Interprets media texts:
  • Draws on knowledge of production process and codes and conventions of texts produced
  • Explores the codes that construct media texts
  • Constructs message(s) and meaning(s) using familiar codes from media texts
  • Compares codes of familiar media text types
  • 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

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
  • Identifies aspects of media industry related to marketing and promotion
  • Examines the impact of marketing on common social concepts such as childhood
  • 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
• Focuses on the relationship between own world and world of the text to construct an interpretive reading

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
  • 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
  • Explores different interpretations of the same event/idea/subject/topic in two sources and their impact on self as reader
  • 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
• 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
  • 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

Under 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

Other relevant subject area: Physical Education and Health