Author: Shelagh Wallace/Chris Worsnop
Level: Elementary Cycle Three, Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Science
Lesson Link: Scientific Detectives
Description: In this lesson, students use science and critical thinking to test the legitimacy of advertisers’ claims about their products. The lesson begins with students viewing and discussing a series of ads that make claims about their products. Students read a case study about two girls who replicated experiments from advertisements as a science fair project, and discuss their findings. Then students conduct their own experiments to see if products live up to their claims.
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 1: To Read and Listen to Literary, Popular and Information-Based Texts
Essential Knowledges:
- Uses prior knowledge and personal experience of the content of a text
- Questions and talk with others to clarify and enrich interpretations
- Makes predictions, confirmations and inferences, when prompted by the teacher
- Makes connections to prior knowledge or to other texts
- Uses different reading strategies according to the text type
- Reads, listens to and views a range of self-selected and personally relevant texts that include:
- Use of personal, social and cultural background and experiences to interpret texts
- Develops a personal response process in the context of a community of readers through:
- Discussion of responses with others individually, on small groups and in the whole class
- Recount of the story and, with guidance, outline of information in a text
- Development of opinions on literary or popular texts
- Sharing of responses with others to clarify meaning and enrich interpretation
- Comparing own responses with those of others at a beginner’s level
- Discussing own response process at a beginner’s level
- Moves beyond the initial response through:
- Responses to texts in a variety of ways that include talking, writing, the Arts, Media
- Early attempts to explain own views of a text
- Support for own views with references to the text in small and large group discussions
- Discussions of structures and features of text and their impact on the reader
- Discussion of the structures and features of a text and their influence on the meaning of a text
- Returning to a text to confirm interpretations and understandings in discussions with peers
- Adjustment of own interpretations in the light of the responses of others at a beginner’s level
- Understands the influence of familiar structures and features on the meaning of text through:
- Identification of some structures and features of familiar text types
- Begins to identify the view of the world presented in a text through:
- Making of inferences, when prompted, about the view of the world presented by the text
- Recognizes self as a member of a reading audience
Competency 2: To Write Self-expressive, Narrative and Information-based Texts
Essential Knowledges:
- Writes to a familiar audience in order to express meaning(s):
- Specific structures and features of familiar texts incorporated into own writing
- Selection of ways to influence a familiar audience in self-expressive and narrative texts
- Experiments with familiar structures and features of different text types in own writing:
- Based on wide repertoire of texts read, viewed in the media and encountered in her/his community
- To suit own purpose and audience
- Develops concept of writer’s craft:
- Guided discussion and questioning of texts read, listened to and produced in order to discover how the text works
Competency 3: To Represent Her/His Literacy in Different Media
Essential Knowledges:
- Uses a repertoire of strategies to unlock messages/meanings in various media texts:
- Use own questions in order to predict and confirm
- Draw on prior experience with familiar media texts to understand how they are constructed
- Rereads/looks again in order to clarify and extend understanding of a text
- Uses structures and features of texts:
- Compare structures and features of familiar media texts
- Uses visual texts to communicate information in group productions of media texts
- Locates similar structures and features in media texts (i.e. a movie and a poster)
- Uses familiar structures and features to respond to and produce media texts
- Applies her/his understanding of the structures and features of a range of familiar (media) texts to unlock their messages/meanings
- Makes meaning of a media text by:
- brainstorming
- drawing on prior knowledge
- sharing responses with peers
- making connections to own experiences
- returning to text
- considering some of the functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
- Using structures and features of the medium and text type in order to clarify meaning and explain her/his response, in collaboration with peers
- Confirming, in collaboration with peers and teacher, that a media text can contain more than one meaning or message
- Consider some of the functions of the media through:
- Collaboration with peers in pairs, small groups and whole class to clarify, decode and respond to media texts
- Recognizing and naming of familiar media: television, radio, film, magazine, video, Internet, CD-ROM, children’s magazines
- Identifying her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of familiar media texts
- Looking at some functions of different, familiar media in relation to her/his understanding of the messages/meanings of a text
- Understands that texts are social and cultural products through:
- Own response and responses of others:
- Compares own response with those of peers in order to support and enrich own understanding
- Investigates, with teacher’s guidance, how different media text types construct reality for us
- Explores, with guidance, some of the structures and features for communicating and presenting information in age-appropriate popular and information-based media texts
- Own response and responses of others:
Production Process
- Pre-Production:
- Selection from the following text types (NOTE: The texts listed below are the same as those that are referred to throughout the Production Process):
- short research project (with guidance)
- Immersion in the text type to be produced and discussion of its structures and features
- Creation of criteria for guiding production:
- Initial consideration, based on her/his knowledge of familiar text type
- Exploratory planning in a risk-taking environment that promotes trial and error and includes:
- Discussion about purpose, audience and context, in collaboration with teacher and peers
- A familiar audience of peers, family and teacher
- Writing of script, storyboard or rough draft of project
- Selection from the following text types (NOTE: The texts listed below are the same as those that are referred to throughout the Production Process):
- Production:
- Production of the texts listed above in groups with peers that:
- Incorporate appropriate communication strategies and resources given the text type and the context
- Function as information-based text type:
- Communicates information to familiar audience
- Follows an appropriate, prescribed procedure to locate, organize and present information, with guidance, on a familiar topic
- Gathers and sorts information, as a beginner and with guidance, on a familiar topic from various media
- Production of the texts listed above in groups with peers that:
- Post Production:
- In collaboration with group members:
- Review of texts produced in order to focus on message/meaning
- Seeking of feedback from peers
- Presentation of text to intended audience
- Self-evaluation of text produced
- In collaboration with group members:
Competency 4: To Use Language to Communicate and Learn
Essential Knowledges:
- Shares information with peers and teacher
- Talks about responses and point of view with peers and teacher
- Asks and answers questions from peers and teacher
- Participates in collaborative improvisation and role-playing activities to communicate experiences and responses:
- Spontaneous creation of a scene
- Creation of a scene, given a framework
- Enactment of a specific solution or problem, during a process of discussion or problem solving
- Responds to the ideas and points of view of others with sensitivity and interest
- Talks through new ideas and information
- Examining of alternative points of view and providing reasons for choosing one over the other
- Uses language (talk) for learning and thinking by:
- Participating in collaborative reading, writing, viewing, visually representing, listening and talking activities:
- Writing, producing and reading together
- Planning of a project
- Brainstorming
- Planning of a cross-curricular or mixed media project
- Participating in role-playing, improvisation and storytelling activities to try out new ideas in new situations and for other purposes
- Questioning and challenging of different points of view/perspectives
- Participating in collaborative reading, writing, viewing, visually representing, listening and talking activities:
- Use of technology resources for collaborative writing, producing and publishing projects for peer audiences
- Listens critically