Quebec Competencies Chart - Understanding Cyberbullying - Virtual vs. Physical Worlds

Author: Emmanuelle Erny-Newton, Media Education Specialist, MediaSmarts
Level: Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Moral Education
Lesson Link: Understanding Cyberbullying - Virtual vs. Physical Worlds

Description: In this three-hour lesson, students explore the concept of cyberbullying and learn how the attributes associated with online communication may fuel inappropriate or bullying behaviour. Connections between other contributing factors to bullying-online and offline-are also reinforced as students develop an understanding of the role played by bystanders and the ways in which our own responses may fuel or stop this kind of behaviour. As a class, students will establish a class “code of (N)ethics” for online conduct.

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
• Examines the relationship between context, producer of text and familiar, intended audience to identify potential problems in communication:
  • Adopts a stance to topic and audience
• Presents the spoken text to audience

Classroom Drama

• Uses drama to explore complex problems and to extend the range of learning contexts
• Engages in on-the-spot improvisation and role-play in order to:
  • Represent different views
  • Experiment with possible social roles and power relationships

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

Production Process

Preproduction

• Rehearses production process:
  • Discusses the purpose, context, target audience and their needs
  • Writes script, storyboard or rough draft

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

Postproduction

• Presents text to intended audience

Text, Audience, Producer

Audience and Producer

• Explores self as individual member of audience (use, personal biases, prior experiences) and as part of a larger target audience
• Examines how media target specific audiences:
  • Identifies ways that different familiar audiences use the media

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
• 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 

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