Rewriting the Script - Competencies Chart

Author: MediaSmarts
Level: Elementary Cycles One and Two
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Personal Planning, Dramatic Arts
Lesson Link: Rewriting the Script

Description: This lesson teaches children that television doesn't always offer the best solutions to conflict. It begins with students discussing a scenario in which two friends experience conflict, with students brainstorming constructive ways in which the conflict could be resolved. On the second day, students look at samples of conflict depicted on television and discuss whether the way these situations are dealt with represents the best way to handle the situation.

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
• Uses knowledge of the relationships between sounds and written symbols
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Experiments with familiar structures and features of different text types in own writing:
  • To suit own purpose and 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
  • 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Immersion in the text type to be produced and discussion of its structures and features
  • Creation of criteria for guiding production:
  • 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
• Writing of script, storyboard or rough draft of project
• Production of the texts listed above in groups with peers that:
  • Incorporate appropriate communication strategies and resources given the text type and the context
  • Function as information-based text type:
    • Communicates information to familiar audience
• In collaboration with group members:
  • Review of texts produced in order to focus on message/meaning
  • Presentation of text to intended audience
  • Self-evaluation of text produced

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
  • 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
• 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
  • 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