Quebec Competencies Chart - Sexual health education and authenticating online information
Author: Matthew Johnson, Media Education Specialist, Media Smarts
Level: Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Moral Education, Physical Education and Health
Lesson Link: Sexual health education and authenticating online information
Description: In this lesson, students will consider the use of the Internet as a research tool and learn how to use search engines more effectively. They then apply these newfound skills to investigating popular myths about sexuality and contraception.
Cross-curricular Competencies |
Broad Areas of Learning |
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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
- Uses linguistic structures and features to communicate her/his meaning and to influence the audience in the manner intended:
- Uses language with the degree of precision and semantic and syntactic awareness required by the context
- Selects the usage conventions suitable both to the text type and to the expectations of the audience
- Presents the spoken text to audience
Action Research
- Defines the issue to be researched by asking questions such as: what are the questions that are critical to this issue? What should we do with what we learn? Who should we talk to or interview? What other resources should we seek?
- Develops a research process to collect data, e.g. researching, interviewing, videotaping, discussing, observing, connecting ideas across disciplines, and using the practical knowledge and experiences of the group
- Analyzes the data and constructs a working theory to explain and interpret the data
- Questions and challenges different points of view
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
- Immerses self in the text type to be produced in order to deconstruct some of its textual features, codes and conventions:
- Analyzes samples of text type
Production
- Communicates information, experiences, points of view and personal responses to a familiar audience
Postproduction
- Presents text to intended audience
- Evaluates production process and text produced, with group and individually
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)
- Uses mixed media and multimedia resources to locate information, do research and communicate with others
Text, Audience, Producer
Textual Features, Codes and Conventions
- Interprets media texts:
- Draws on knowledge of production process and codes and conventions of texts produced
- Explores the codes that construct media texts, e.g. headlines, captions and photographs in newspapers
- Constructs message(s) and meaning(s) using familiar codes from media texts
- Identifies functions of media discourse: to entertain, to persuade, to promote, to inform
- Examines ways in which bias occurs in various media texts
Audience and Producer
- Explores self as individual member of audience (use, personal biases, prior experiences) and as part of a larger target audience
- Chooses texts to read, interpret and produce based on interest(s), purpose(s), and preference
- Compares:
- Own values with those presented in media texts
- Own responses, reactions and consumption of media texts with those of peers and other age groups
- Examines how media target specific audiences:
- Explores how the structures and features of texts shape meaning for an audience
- Discusses characteristics of producer:
- Explores where, when, why, by and for whom texts are produced
- Considers the stance of different media texts on issues and concerns of interest to young adolescents
- Identifies aspects of media industry related to marketing and promotion
- Examines the impact of marketing on common social concepts such as childhood
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
- Makes connections between conventions of a familiar text type/genre and own response(s) /interpretation(s)
- Examines the constructed world of narrative text: uses her/his response(s) as the basis for connecting own meaning(s) to the conventions used to plot/construct the story
- 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
- Predictions and inferences about the view of the world presented in text,
- Initial, tentative impressions about the statement(s) or view of the world the author/narrator /producer is making
- Features, codes and conventions of known text types/genres,
- With guidance, examines text in its literary and/or socio-cultural context:
- Identifies features, codes and conventions used to achieve a recognized social purpose and/or function and/or effect and impact on self as reader, e.g. in a popular television commercial, in a humorous text
- Explores different interpretations of the same event/idea/subject/topic in two sources and their impact on self as reader, e.g. current events in newspapers, on television, or radio
- Connects, in a trial-and-error fashion, her/his understanding of some characteristics of narrator/writer/producer to what s/he notices about the view of the world presented in the text, e.g. reads “between the lines” to locate apparent values/beliefs of a character/narrator in a story, understands the intent of a fast food ad, sees that an opinion excludes certain points of view
- Communicates interpretation(s) of a text in an individual voice, referring to prior experience, own reading profile and understanding of texts as social constructs:
- Follows a process to compose, i.e. writes or produces own interpretation(s) of a text
- Interprets the view of the world in the text in different media, including mixed media, for a familiar audience
- Expresses own interpretation(s) with clarity, openness and confidence
- Uses an inquiry process and action research in collaboration with peers to organize and report information in nonfiction and/or popular texts of interest to young adolescents for a familiar audience
Other subject-specific programs
Ethics and Religious Culture
Reflects on ethical questions
Analyzes a situation from an ethical point of view
- Describes a situation and puts it into context
- Formulates a related ethical question
- Compares points of view
- Explains tensions or conflicting values
- Compares the situation with similar situations
- Compares his/her analysis of the situation with that of his/her classmates
Examines a variety of cultural, moral, religious, scientific or social references
- Finds the main references present in different points of view
- Looks for the role and the meaning of these references
- Considers other references
- Compares the meaning of the main references in different contexts
Evaluates options or possible actions
- Suggests options or possible actions
- Studies the effects of these options or actions on oneself, others or the situation
- Chooses options or actions that foster community life
- Reflects on the factors that influenced these choices
Physical Education and Health
The Cycle One program states:
The messages conveyed by the media can have major repercussions on the behaviour of adolescents. Therefore, it is important that students be encouraged to maintain a critical distance with regard to the media. For example, during a big sports event, certain networks show violent images involving the athletes. Reports on doping, which some athletes resort to, raise ethical questions about respecting rules and about honesty and fair play. Advertising uses an infinite amount of female body images to demonstrate the effects of products that enable you to obtain the perfect body with no physical effort. This sometimes contradictory information cannot help but challenge students, who must exercise critical judgment when they situate this information in relation to the various contexts in which they develop the subject-specific competencies.
The broad area of learning Media Literacy is thus part of this program.