Quebec Competencies Chart - Girls and Boys on Television

Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts
Level: Grades 3 to 6
Lesson Length: 2 hours
Subject Area: Media representation of gender
Lesson Link: http://mediasmarts.ca//lessonplan/girls-and-boys-television

Description: In this lesson, students discuss television programming aimed at children and how girls and boys are portrayed in it. Students illustrate what they dislike about portrayals of girls or boys and then create their own TV character who will counter the illustrated negative portrayals.

Cross-curricular Competencies

Broad Areas of Learning

To use information
To solve problems
To exercise critical judgement
To use creativity
To cooperate with others
To communicate appropriately

Media Literacy
Health and Well-Being

This lesson satisfies the following Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

English Language Arts

To Read and Listen to Literary, Popular and Information-Based Texts

To use a response process when reading and listening to literary, popular, and information-based texts
To construct her/his own view of the world through reading and listening to literary, popular and information-based texts
To construct a profile of self as reader
To self-evaluate her/his reading development
To construct meaning by applying appropriate reading strategies

To Write Self-expressive, Narrative and Information-based Texts

To integrate her/his knowledge of texts into own writing
To self-evaluate her/his writing development
To follow a process when writing
To construct profile of self as writer
To use writing as a system for communicating and constructing meaning

To Represent Her/His Literacy in Different Media

To apply appropriate strategies for constructing meaning
To self-evaluate her/his development as a viewer and producer of media texts
To follow a process to respond to media texts
To construct her/his own view of the world through the media
To follow a production process in order to communicate for specific purposes to a specified audience

To Use Language to Communicate and Learn

To use language (talk) to communicate information, experiences and point of view
To self-evaluate her/his language development
To use language (talk) for learning and thinking
To apply her/his knowledge of linguistic structures and features
To interact in collaborative group activities in a variety of roles

Visual Arts

To produce media works in the visual arts

To use creative ideas inspired by a stimulus for creation of media works
To share his/her experience of media creation
To use transforming gestures and elements of visual arts language according to the message and the intended viewer
To organize the elements that he/she has chosen, depending on the message and the intended viewer
To finalize his/her media creation

Ethics and Religious Culture

Reflects on ethical questions

Identifies a situation from an ethical point of view

Describes a situation and puts it into context
Reformulates a related ethical question in his/her own words
Identifies values and norms in the ethical question
Identifies tensions
Compares his/her perception of the situation with that of his/her classmates

Evaluates options or possible actions

Suggests possible actions
Looks for the effects of certain actions on oneself, others or the situation
Chooses actions to promote that foster community life
Reflects on the factors that influenced these choices

Examines several cultural, moral, religious, scientific or social references

Finds several references present in different points of view
Looks for the role played by these references
Considers other references