Quebec Competencies Chart - The Anatomy of Cool

Author: MediaSmarts
Level: Cycles Two and Three
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Personal Development
Lesson Link: The Anatomy of Cool

Description: This lesson helps students to become more aware of the media's role in determining what characteristics, and what people, are perceived as being "cool." Through class discussion and activities, students explore the differences between superficial and real coolness, and how marketers use the concept of cool to sell products; and how their own attitudes and perceptions are affected by media messages that reinforce what coolness is.

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

Competency 1: To Read and Listen to Literary, Popular and Information-Based Texts

Essential Knowledges:

• Uses prior knowledge and personal experience of the content of a text
• Use of pictures and other graphic representations to interpret texts
• Questions and talk with others to clarify and enrich interpretations
• Makes predictions, confirmations and inferences, when prompted by the teacher
• Makes connections to prior knowledge or to other texts
• Uses different reading strategies according to the text type
• Reads, listens to and views a range of self-selected and personally relevant texts that include:
  • Use of personal, social and cultural background and experiences to interpret texts
• Develops a personal response process in the context of a community of readers through:
  • Discussion of responses with others individually, on small groups and in the whole class
  • Recount of the story and, with guidance, outline of information in a text
  • Development of opinions on literary or popular texts
  • Sharing of responses with others to clarify meaning and enrich interpretation
  • Comparing own responses with those of others at a beginner's level
  • Discussing own response process at a beginner's level
• Moves beyond the initial response through:
  • Responses to texts in a variety of ways that include talking, writing, the Arts, Media
  • Early attempts to explain own views of a text
  • Support for own views with references to the text in small and large group discussions
  • Discussions of structures and features of text and their impact on the reader
  • Discussion of the structures and features of a text and their influence on the meaning of a text
  • Returning to a text to confirm interpretations and understandings in discussions with peers
  • Adjustment of own interpretations in the light of the responses of others at a beginner's level
• Sees a text as a construction through:
  • Suggestion of alternative endings or actions in a literary or popular text
  • Plausibility of events, characters, opinions and/or information in a text in relation to own values and experiences
• Understands the influence of familiar structures and features on the meaning of text through:
  • Identification of some structures and features of familiar text types
• Begins to identify the view of the world presented in a text through:
  • Making of inferences, when prompted, about the view of the world presented by the text
  • Discussions, with guidance, of whose voices are heard and whose are missing in a text
  • Comparison, with guidance, of own values with some of the social, cultural and historical values in a literary text in teacher and peer discussions
• Recognizes self as a member of a reading audience 

Competency 2: To Write Self-expressive, Narrative and Information-based Texts

Essential Knowledges:

• Writes to a familiar audience in order to express meaning(s):
  • Specific structures and features of familiar texts incorporated into own writing
  • Selection of ways to influence a familiar audience in self-expressive and narrative texts
• Experiments with familiar structures and features of different text types in own writing:
  • Based on wide repertoire of texts read, viewed in the media and encountered in her/his community
  • To suit own purpose and audience
• Develops concept of writer's craft:
  • Guided discussion and questioning of texts read, listened to and produced in order to discover how the text works
• Develops personal contribution to the development of a writing community in the classroom through:
  • Criteria for "good" writing discovered and developed from texts read, viewed and listened to
  • Criteria for "good" writing related to text type, purpose and audience

Competency 3: To Represent Her/His Literacy in Different Media

Essential Knowledges:

• Uses the familiar images, signs, symbols and logos in his/her environment:
  • Recognition that they are made by people for different purposes
  • Recognition that they have meanings/messages
  • Identification of how these images contribute to the messages/meanings of various media texts
• Uses a repertoire of strategies to unlock messages/meanings in various media texts:
  • Use own questions in order to predict and confirm
  • Draw on prior experience with familiar media texts to understand how they are constructed
  • Rereads/looks again in order to clarify and extend understanding of a text
• Uses structures and features of texts:
  • Compare structures and features of familiar media texts
  • Uses visual texts to communicate information in group productions of media texts
  • Uses familiar structures and features to respond to and produce media texts
  • Applies her/his understanding of the structures and features of a range of familiar (media) texts to unlock their messages/meanings
• Makes meaning of a media text by:
  • brainstorming
  • drawing on prior knowledge
  • sharing responses with peers
  • making connections to own experiences
  • returning to text
  • considering some of the functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
  • Using structures and features of the medium and text type in order to clarify meaning and explain her/his response, in collaboration with peers
  • Confirming, in collaboration with peers and teacher, that a media text can contain more than one meaning or message
  • Identifying and discussing some of the ways in which pictures, illustrations, popular symbols and signs and images enhance the messages/meanings in media texts designed for young viewers
• Consider some of the functions of the media through:
  • Collaboration with peers in pairs, small groups and whole class to clarify, decode and respond to media texts
  • Recognizing and naming of familiar media: television, radio, film, magazine, video, Internet, CD-ROM, children's magazines
  • Identifying her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of familiar media texts
  • Looking at some functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
  • Describing some of the features of media texts, with content aimed at viewers of the same age and younger, that entertain, inform and promote
• Understands that texts are social and cultural products through:
  • Own response and responses of others:
    • Compares own response with those of peers in order to support and enrich own understanding
    • Investigates, with teacher's guidance, how different media text types construct reality for us
    • Explores, with guidance, some of the structures and features for communicating and presenting information in age-appropriate popular and information-based media texts
    • Explores how the structures and features of texts shape meaning for audience
    • Uses photographs:
      • Family photographs:
      • For storytelling, with guidance
• Real and Imaginary Worlds
  • Explores, through discussion, how characters, incidents and/or events in media texts that tell a story relate to her/his personal experiences
  • Returns to text to make sense of real and imaginary events
  • Explores and discusses the distinguishing features of real and imaginary events and characters
  • Tentatively interprets the feelings, thoughts and motives of real and imaginary characters in discussions with peers
  • Explores the depiction of heroes and heroines, both imaginary and real, in the media

Production Process

• Pre-Production:
  • Selection from the following text types (NOTE: The texts listed below are the same as those that are referred to throughout the Production Process):
    • Greeting cards, illustrated picture books, storyboards, paintings and drawings, illustrations (using different media), cover for a favourite book
    • Posters and signs, charts, graphs and time lines, comic strips, computer-assisted graphic reproductions, models from instruction booklets, surveys of viewing habits, magazine for peers
    • Photo essay, advertisements, short research project (with guidance)
    • Immersion in the text type to be produced and discussion of its structures and features
    • Creation of criteria for guiding production:
      • Initial consideration, based on her/his knowledge of familiar text type
    • Exploratory planning in a risk-taking environment that promotes trial and error and includes:
      • Discussion about purpose, audience and context, in collaboration with teacher and peers
• Production:
  • Production of the texts listed above in groups with peers that:
    • Incorporate images, symbols, signs, logos and/or words to communicate meaning or message
    • Incorporate appropriate communication strategies and resources given the text type and the context
    • Function as information-based text type:
      • Communicates information to familiar audience
      • Gathers and sorts information, as a beginner and with guidance, on a familiar topic from various media
      • Use mixed media, e.g. images and words
• Post Production:
  • In collaboration with group members:
    • Review of texts produced in order to focus on message/meaning
    • Seeking of feedback from peers
    • Presentation of text to intended audience

Competency 4: To Use Language to Communicate and Learn

Essential Knowledges:

• Shares information with peers and teacher
• Talks about responses and point of view with peers and teacher
• Asks and answers questions from peers and teacher
• Responds to the ideas and points of view of others with sensitivity and interest
• Talks through new ideas and information
• Examining of alternative points of view and providing reasons for choosing one over the other
• Uses language (talk) for learning and thinking by:
  • Participating in collaborative reading, writing, viewing, visually representing, listening and talking activities:
    • Planning of a project
    • Brainstorming
    • Planning of a cross-curricular or mixed media project
  • Questioning and challenging of different points of view/perspectives