Quebec Competencies Chart – Art Exchange

Author: Grace Foran, The eQuality Project and Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts
Level: Secondary Cycle Two
Duration: 1 hour, plus time for assessment/evaluation activity
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Visual Arts, Ethics and Religious Culture
Lesson Link: https://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources/art-exchange

Description: The purpose of the lesson is to facilitate and develop youth art as a form of community engagement and give students the opportunity to explore their experiences with privacy and equality in networked spaces. Students will be presented with several scenarios related to experiences of privacy and (in)equality in networked spaces and how young people have used art to advocate for change. Students will be asked to develop an art project (mural, collage, recorded performances, face/body art, etc.) that they believe best reflects the issues that are important to them. Since the expertise and support to implement an art project vary from classroom to classroom, there are three options for completing this lesson: (i) students design and create their art projects; (ii) students develop a plan to produce an art project without actually creating it; and (iii) students are mentored by professional artists who help them design and implement their art projects.

Cross-curricular Competencies

  • To use information
  • To solve problems
  • To exercise critical judgement
  • To use creativity
  • To adopt effective work methods
  • To use information and communication technologies (ICT)
  • To construct his/her identity
  • To cooperate with others
  • To communicate appropriately

Broad Areas of Learning

  • Media Literacy
  • Health and Well-Being
  • Environmental Awareness and Consumer Rights and Responsibilities
  • Citizenship and Community Life

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

English Language Arts

Uses language/talk to communicate and learn

Establishes a repertoire of resources for communicating and learning in specific contexts

  • Examines some of the aesthetic qualities of spoken language
  • Develops rhetorical strategies to achieve specific purposes
  • Examines the affordances of genres

Participates in the social practices of the classroom and community in specific contexts

  • Investigates the uses of spoken language in the school and community
  • Engages in a process of self-evaluation and reflection

Interacts with peers and teacher in specific contexts

  • Collaborates with peers to construct knowledge about how things are done
  • Participates in collaborative action research groups using an inquiry process
  • Applies procedural and meaningmaking strategies to achieve a purpose

Reads and listens to written, spoken and media texts

Integrates reading profile, stance and strategies to make sense of a text in a specific context

  • Draws on prior experience and the features of a genre to make sense of a text
  • Adjusts reading strategies and stance to the context
  • Develops research and organizational strategies for working with information

Talks about own response to a text within a classroom community

  • Considers possible reasons for own responses and the responses of others to clarify and reshape the relationship between self as reader and the text

Interprets the relationship(s) between reader, text and context in light of own response(s)

  • Explains the impact of a text on self as reader by returning to its social functions, as well as the way meanings and messages are constructed
  • Constructs interpretations that embody both own world and the world of the text

Produces texts for personal and social purposes

Extends repertoire of resources for producing texts

  • Investigates the codes and conventions of various genres
  • Creates criteria for what makes text(s) effective
  • Examines the affordances of different modes and genres to make production decisions
  • Uses models of different texts to apply chosen features in own work
  • Applies codes and conventions of written and media language
  • Develops standards for using language responsibly to represent people, events and ideas

Constructs a relationship between writer/producer, text and context

  • Understands that all texts are constructed in specific contexts for specific audiences and purposes
  • Researches as a writer/producer to become more informed, to create authentic contexts and to characterize an audience
  • Assumes various roles in own productions
  • Analyzes the elements of the context and shapes the text accordingly
  • Examines the differences between producing texts for public and private spaces.

Adapts a process to produce texts in specific contexts

  • Participates both individually and collaboratively in different recursive phases of the production process
  • Uses feedback strategies to improve own productions and support peers
  • Reflects on own development as a writer/producer over time

Visual Arts

Creates media images

Uses ideas to create a media production

  • Is receptive to ideas, images, emotions, sensations and impressions evoked by the stimulus
  • Takes into account the characteristics of the target audience
  • Explores various ways of conveying ideas through images and adapting them to the target audience
  • Chooses ideas and plans a media creation project

Shares his/her experience of media creation

  • Considers his/her creative intention and progress
  • Identifies what he/she has learned and the methods used

Uses transforming gestures and elements of media language

  • Experiments with methods of materializing his/her ideas
  • Makes use of his/her memory of transforming gestures and knowledge of media language
  • Chooses the most meaningful gestures and elements for his/her creative intention
  • Develops methods of using these gestures and elements in order to adapt them to the target audience

Structures his/her media production

  • Applies the results of his/her experiments
  • Shapes the material and language elements and organizes them on the basis of the message to be conveyed
  • Reviews his/her choices of material and language

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
  • Explains tensions or conflicting values
  • Compares the situation with similar situations

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

Evaluates 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

Engages in dialogue

Organizes his/her thinking

  • Identifies the subject of dialogue
  • Makes connections between prior knowledge and new knowledge

Develops a substantiated point of view

  • Uses his/her resources and looks for information about the subject of dialogue
  • Fleshes out a point of view
  • Anticipates objections and necessary clarifications
  • Validates his/her point of view