Quebec Competencies Chart - Putdowns

Author: J. Craig Oliphant
Level: Elementary Cycle Three
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Personal Development, Visual Arts, Drama
Lesson Link: Putdowns

Description: This lesson focuses on put-down mentality in the media. Through a series of activities and classroom discussion, students explore how put-downs are used in TV situation comedy, film, music, fashion, pop culture and advertising and how put-downs affect one's self-esteem and social/emotional well-being.

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
• 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
  • Searching the Internet to locate texts that entertain, promote, and inform
• 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 Identification of some of the ways in which information is presented in popular and information-based texts
• 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

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

Essential Knowledges:

• 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
  • Locates similar structures and features in media texts (i.e. a movie and a poster)
  • 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
  • Using text to support interpretation of characters' points of view in narrative and popular texts
• 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
• 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
• Selection from the following text types:
  • 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
    • A familiar audience of peers, family and teacher
• 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 popular media text type
  • Function as information-based text type:
    • Communicates information to familiar audience
    • Follows an appropriate, prescribed procedure to locate, organize and present information, with guidance, on a familiar topic
    • 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
    • Use mixed media and multimedia resources, e.g. images and words, computers
• In collaboration with group members:
  • Review of texts produced in order to focus on message/meaning
  • Guidance with initial editing of text
  • 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
• Participates in collaborative improvisation and role-playing activities to communicate experiences and responses:
  • Spontaneous creation of a scene
  • Creation of a scene, given a framework
  • Enactment of stories heard or read
  • Modelling possible social roles and behaviours
  • Enactment of a specific solution or problem, during a process of discussion or problem solving
• Responds to the ideas and points of view of others with sensitivity and interest
• Talks through new ideas and information
• Shapes communication to achieve its purpose and to meet the needs of the listener/audience:
  • Use of emotional appeals, such as to a sense of justice, duty or patriotism
• 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:
    • Writing, producing and reading together
    • Planning of a project
    • Brainstorming
    • Planning of a cross-curricular or mixed media project
  • Participating in role-playing, improvisation and storytelling activities to try out new ideas in new situations and for other purposes
  • Questioning and challenging of different points of view/perspectives
• Listens critically