Quebec Competencies Chart - Reality Check: Getting the Goods on Science and Health

Author: Matthew Johnson, Director of Education, MediaSmarts
Level: Secondary Cycle Two
Lesson Length: 1-1.5 Hours, plus time for assessment/evaluation activity
Subject Area: English Language Arts, Visual Art, Ethics and Religious Culture
Lesson Link: https://mediasmarts.ca/teacher-resources/reality-check-getting-goods-science-health

Description: In this lesson, students start by considering the wide range of science and health information they are likely to encounter in news or through social media. They read an article on a scientific topic to help them understand the particular challenges of verifying science and health information and then use an educational computer game to practice skills in critically reading health and science stories. Finally, students compile a list of reliable sources they can turn to for verifying health and science stories.

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 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

  • Develops rhetorical strategies to achieve specific purposes
  • Examines the affordances of genres
  • Extends the range of strategies for collecting the data needed for use in specific genres

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

  • Plans and carries out independent units of study
  • Conducts exploratory ethnographic research
  • Organizes and maintains an integrated profile of work over the cycle
  • Engages in a process of self-evaluation and reflection
  • Confers with the teacher in regular and ongoing evaluation conferences

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 meaning making strategies to achieve a purpose
  • Contributes to team efforts as an interactive and critical listener

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

  • Deepens own meaning(s) of a text in discussions with other readers
  • Situates meanings within own experiences and the world of the text, in order to transform initial readings into more conscious interpretations
  • 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
  • Draws on own reading profile, including knowledge of textual structures and features, to locate textual details that support own interpretations
  • 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

  • Immerses self in texts to learn how they are constructed
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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

  • Monitors own learning
  • Cultivates a variety of media and writerly practices

Visual Arts

Creates media images

Uses ideas to create a media production

  • Is open to a stimulus for creation
  • Is receptive to ideas, images, emotions, sensations and impressions evoked by the stimulus
  • Takes into account the characteristics of the target audience
  • Keeps a record of his/her ideas
  • Explores various ways of conveying ideas through images and adapting them to the target audience

Shares his/her experience of media creation

  • 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

  • Shapes the material and language elements and organizes them on the basis of the message to be conveyed

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
  • Compares points of view
  • 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
  • Considers other references
  • Compares the meaning of the main references in different contexts

Engages in dialogue

Organizes his/her thinking

  • Makes connections between prior knowledge and new knowledge
  • Distinguishes between what is essential and what is secondary in the different points of view expressed
  • Takes stock of his/her reflections

Develops a substantiated point of view

  • Develops further his/her understanding of different points of view
  • Imagines various hypotheses
  • Fleshes out a point of view
  • Anticipates objections and necessary clarifications
  • Validates his/her point of view
  • Reflects on his/her process

Interacts with others

  • Expresses his/her point of view and pays attention to others' views
  • Explains different points of view, using relevant and coherent arguments
  • Asks for clarification