Quebec Competencies Chart - Television Techniques

Author: Elizabeth Verall
Level: Elementary Cycles One, Two and Three
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Visual Arts, Drama
Lesson Link: Television Techniques

Description: This lesson is one of a five-part unit that provides teachers with ideas for teaching TV in the elementary classroom. In this lesson, students create their own media productions to learn how television uses technology and film techniques to communicate meaning.

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
• Understands the influence of familiar structures and features on the meaning of text through:
  • Identification of some structures and features of familiar text types
• Recognizes self as a member of a reading audience

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
• 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:
  • drawing on prior knowledge
  • sharing responses with peers
  • 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
• 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
  • Looking at some functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
• Pre-Production:
  • 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
    • Writing of script, storyboard or rough draft of project
• Production:
  • Production of the texts listed above in groups with peers that:
    • Incorporate appropriate communication strategies and resources given the text type and the context
    • Use different technologies in order to construct a variety of text types:
      • An audio recorder to listen to or record a story
      • A VCR, audio recorder and other technologies
• Post Production:
  • In collaboration with group members:
    • Review of texts produced in order to focus on message/meaning

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
  • Enactment of stories heard or read
  • Experimentation with form
• Responds to the ideas and points of view of others with sensitivity and interest
• Talks through new ideas and information
• 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
  • Questioning and challenging of different points of view/perspectives
• Use of technology resources for collaborative writing, producing and publishing projects for peer audiences
• Listens critically