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.

Cross-curricular Competencies

Broad Areas of Learning

  • To use information
  • To solve problems
  • To exercise critical judgement
  • To adopt effective work methods
  • To work with others
  • To communicate appropriately
  • Media Literacy
  • Health and Well-Being
  • Citizenship and Community Life

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 

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