Quebec Competencies Chart - Video Production of a Newscast

Author: Stephanie M. Rusnak
Level: Secondary Cycle One
Subject Area: English Language Arts
Lesson Link: Video Production of a Newscast

Description: In this lesson, students will produce a 20 minute news broadcast. In teams of 4-5, students will create and film a two minute segment of a school news show. In the process of planning their segments, students will study news broadcasts; learn how to create a T-script for their audio and visuals; develop scripts; and utilise production and film techniques such as setting, presentation, props, camera angles, and editing.

Cross-curricular Competencies	Broad Areas of Learning
To use information To solve problems To exercise critical judgement To be creative To adopt effective work methods To use information and communications technologies for learning purposes To work with others To communicate appropriately	Media Literacy

This lesson satisfies the following English Language Arts Competencies from the Quebec Education Program:

Competency One: Uses language/talk to communicate and learn

Production Process:

• Uses strategies to generate, clarify and expand ideas
• Examines the relationship between context, producer of text and familiar, intended audience to identify potential problems in communication:
  • Adopts a stance to topic and audience
  • Chooses a level of language or register most suitable to the context
• Uses linguistic structures and features to communicate her/his meaning and to influence the audience in the manner intended:
  • Prepares several drafts, if the context warrants it, and rehearses with peers as a simulated audience
  • Uses language with the degree of precision and semantic and syntactic awareness required by the context
  • Experiments with intonation patterns, pitch and volume for desired effects
  • Selects the usage conventions suitable both to the text type and to the expectations of the audience
• Presents the spoken text to audience

Action Research

• Defines the issue to be researched by asking questions such as: what are the questions that are critical to this issue? What should we do with what we learn? Who should we talk to or interview? What other resources should we seek?

Classroom Drama

• Uses physical movement and nonverbal language such as sounds, images, gestures, facial expressions
• Experiments with register and dialect in specific situations

Social Practices of Classroom and Community

• Examines the discourse used to present information in selected spoken, written and media texts

Competency Two: Represents his/her literacy in various media

Production Process

Preproduction

• Rehearses production process:
  • Creates criteria for guiding production, e.g. features of an effective poster or advertisement
  • Discusses the purpose, context, target audience and their needs
  • Decides about medium, mode and code
  • Writes script, storyboard or rough draft
  • Shares draft with classmates and intended audience

Production

• Inter-relates the characteristics of media text in a specific context drawing on:
  • Specific communication strategies and resources
• Reviews and edits text to focus on meaning(s)/message(s)

Postproduction

• Presents text to intended audience

Information and Communications Technologies (ICT)

• Uses different available technologies in order to construct own texts
• Uses mixed media and multimedia resources to locate information, do research and communicate with others

Text, Audience, Producer

Textual Features, Codes and Conventions

• Identifies and deconstructs codes:
  • Captions, credits and titles
  • Dialogue and voiceovers
  • Lighting and sound
  • Camera language
  • Sequencing
• Interprets media texts:
  • Uses media strategies to focus understanding: freezing frames, replaying the text, watching only the images, isolating sound
  • Draws on knowledge of production process and codes and conventions of texts produced
  • Explores the codes that construct media texts, e.g. headlines, captions and photographs in newspapers
  • Constructs message(s) and meaning(s) using familiar codes from media texts
  • Compares codes of familiar media text types, e.g. how codes of television news (reporter, anchor, camera footage) and newspapers (framed photo, captions, lead paragraph) impact the coverage of a local issue

Representation

• Identifies some aspects of representation and exclusion, i.e. deconstructs:
  • Local news reporting in newspapers, TV and radio such as: role of the reporter/interviewer; treatment of same event, incident, issue, topic or person by different media

Audience and Producer

• Chooses texts to read, interpret and produce based on interest(s), purpose(s), and preference
• Examines how media target specific audiences:
  • Identifies subjects of interest for specific audiences

Competency Three: Reads and listens to written, spoken and media texts

Reader’s Stance: Constructing a Reading of a Text

• Focuses on the world of the text to construct an aesthetic reading of text
• Focuses on making sense of information in a text to construct an efferent reading, e.g. reads print and visual information with the intention of remembering details/examples and/or of following instructions, rereads to verify meaning(s) s/he is making, relates to personal experience and prior knowledge

Reader, Text, Context: Interpreting Texts

• With guidance, examines text in its literary and/or socio-cultural context:
  • Identifies features, codes and conventions used to achieve a recognized social purpose and/or function and/or effect and impact on self as reader, e.g. in a popular television commercial, in a humorous text