Quebec Competencies Chart - Writing a Newspaper Article

Author: Stephanie M. Rusnak
Level: Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Moral Education
Lesson Link: Writing a Newspaper Article

Description: In this lesson, students will write a news article for the school newspaper.

Cross-curricular Competencies

Broad Areas of Learning

  • To use information
  • To exercise critical judgement
  • To be creative
  • To adopt effective work methods
  • To use information and communications technologies for learning purposes
  • To work with others
  • To communicate appropriately
  • Media Literacy

This lesson satisfies the following English Language Arts Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

Competency One: Uses language/talk to communicate and learn

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
  • 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

  • Negotiates text type to be produced
  • 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
    • Carries out a content analysis or inquiry into some aspect of media text
  • Rehearses production process:
    • Creates criteria for guiding production, e.g. features of an effective poster or advertisement
    • Discusses the purpose, context, target audience and their needs
    • Writes script, storyboard or rough draft
    • Gives and seeks specific feedback from others in the class

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
    • Images, symbols, signs, logos and/or words to communicate meaning(s)/message(s)
    • Knowledge of structures and features of other media texts brought into own productions
  • Reviews and edits text to focus on meaning(s)/message(s)

Postproduction

  • Presents text to intended audience

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

  • Uses different available technologies in order to construct own texts
  • 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
    • Compares codes of familiar media text types, e.g. how codes of television news (reporter, anchor, camera footage) and newspapers (framed photo, captions, lead paragraph) impact the coverage of a local issue
    • Identifies functions of media discourse: to entertain, to persuade, to promote, to inform
    • Makes connection(s) between images, signs, symbols, pictures and printed text and meaning
    • Confirms, by talking with peers and teacher, that a media text can contain more than one message
    • Identifies and discusses some of the ways in which pictures, illustrations, symbols and images enhance the message
    • Explores the use of “formulas”

Representation

  • Analyzes the functions of familiar photographs (of self, family and community) to record events and memories
  • Identifies some aspects of representation and exclusion, i.e. deconstructs:
    • Age, gender, family, culture, race, location, such as: portrayals of teens, depictions of a student’s neighbourhood in local news
    • Local news reporting in newspapers, TV and radio such as: role of the reporter/interviewer; treatment of same event, incident, issue, topic or person by different media

Audience and Producer

  • Chooses texts to read, interpret and produce based on interest(s), purpose(s), and preference
  • Examines how media target specific audiences:
    • Identifies subjects of interest for specific audiences
    • Explores how the structures and features of texts shape meaning for an audience
    • Explains how own productions are adapted to interests of familiar audience chosen
  • Discusses characteristics of producer:
    • Explores where, when, why, by and for whom texts are produced
    • Explores production choices made in own texts

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)
  • 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

  • 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