Outcome Chart - Alberta - COM1005: Visual Composition
Outcome Chart - Alberta - COM1005: Visual Composition

Outcome Chart - Alberta - COM1005: Visual Composition

In this lesson students explore the relationship between athletes and advertising through a number of different activities.

Students begin by viewing a slideshow that explores common stereotypes of mental illness and mental illness treatment in media. They read a prepared analysis of the portrayal of mental illness in a TV show popular with teens, then in a small group analyze another text of their choice. Finally, students create an annotated version of a scene or excerpt from a text in which they analyze and evaluate its portrayal of mental illness.

Many curricular expectations in B.C. Physical and Health Education courses relate to media and digital literacy. Media and digital literacy skills and concepts can be found in many of the Big Ideas, Curricular Competencies and specific course content.

Media components are included in the Northwest Territories Social Studies curriculum in the Managing Information and Ideas strand. The document Social Studies in the Northwest Territories – A Kindergarten to Grade 4 Overview includes the following among key social studies skills:

“The use of information technology will help enable all students to solve problems, improve their personal performance, and gain the critical and abstract thinking skills necessary to become lifelong learners and contributing members of their communities” (Manitoba Education and Training, Technology As a Foundation Skill Area).

In this lesson, students talk about dressing up and taking on identities that are similar to or different from them. They are then introduced to the idea of avatars as a kind of “dressing up” inside video games and consider the ways in which the technical, generic and aesthetic limitations on avatar creation and customization affect their choices and their ability to represent themselves online.

In this lesson, students learn to question media representations of gender, relationships and sexuality. After a brief “myth busting” quiz about relationships in the media and a reminder of the constructed nature of media products, the teacher leads the class in an analysis of the messages about gender, sex and relationships communicated by beer and alcohol ads. Students analyze the messages communicated by their favourite media types and then contrast it with their own experience.

Many curricular expectations in Alberta Ethics courses relate to media and digital literacy. The following excerpts from Ethics A.1 (Junior High) (1985) detail how media and digital literacy have been integrated into the curriculum:

This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the British Columbia, Grade 9 English Language Arts curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.