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

Competency One: Uses language/talk to communicate and learn

Social Practices of Classroom and Community

• Examines the characteristics of familiar dominant discourses and minority voices: whose voices are heard and whose are silenced

Competency Two: Represents his/her literacy in various media

Text, Audience, Producer

Textual Features, Codes and Conventions

• Identifies and deconstructs codes:
• Captions, credits and titles
• Symbolic
• Interprets media texts:
• Uses media strategies to focus understanding
• Draws on knowledge of production process and codes and conventions of texts produced
• Explores the codes that construct media texts
• Identifies functions of media discourse: to entertain, to persuade, to promote, to inform
• Makes connection(s) between images, signs, symbols, pictures and printed text and meaning
• Confirms, by talking with peers and teacher, that a media text can contain more than one message
• Identifies and discusses some of the ways in which pictures, illustrations, symbols and images enhance the message
• Explores the use of “formulas”
• Recognizes purpose and function of stereotypes
• Examines ways in which bias occurs in various media texts

Representation

• Identifies some aspects of representation and exclusion, i.e. deconstructs:
• Age, gender, family, culture, race, location
• Local news reporting in newspapers

Audience and Producer

• Explores self as individual member of audience (use, personal biases, prior experiences) and as part of a larger target audience
• Chooses texts to read, interpret and produce based on interest(s), purpose(s), and preference
• Compares:
• Own values with those presented in media texts
• Different uses s/he makes of media texts
• Interests, attitudes, personal biases and tastes over time through survey of own reading habits
• Own responses, reactions and consumption of media texts with those of peers and other age groups
• Examines how media target specific audiences:
• Identifies ways that different familiar audiences use the media
• Identifies and generalizes aspects of familiar audiences
• Identifies subjects of interest for specific audiences
• Explores how the structures and features of texts shape meaning for an audience
• Explains how own productions are adapted to interests of familiar audience chosen
• Discusses characteristics of producer:
• Explores where, when, why, by and for whom texts are produced
• Considers the stance of different media texts on issues and concerns of interest to young adolescents
• Identifies connections made by producers between media texts, e.g. references to Disney in fast-food commercials
• Identifies aspects of media industry related to marketing and promotion
• Examines the impact of marketing on common social concepts such as childhood
• Explores production choices made in own texts

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

Reader’s Stance: Constructing a Reading of a 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

Reading Strategies: Text Grammars (Structures, Features, Codes and Conventions)

• Constructs meaning(s)/message(s) by reinvesting her/his knowledge of the text as social construct, i.e. language-in-use:
• Draws on cues in familiar structures, features, codes and conventions to make sense of texts
• Identifies connotation and denotation of words, images and their referents
• Makes connections between conventions of a familiar text type/genre and own response(s) /interpretation(s)
• Examines the constructed world of narrative text: uses her/his response(s) as the basis for connecting own meaning(s) to the conventions used to plot/construct the story
• Applies contextual understanding when meaning breaks down:
• Socio-cultural: draws on understanding of values and beliefs to make sense of incidents, events or message(s)

Reader, Text, Context: Interpreting Texts

• Interprets the text for a familiar audience by drawing associations between own world of personal experiences and knowledge and the world of the text by considering:
• Own characteristics as a reader and the constructed world of a text, e.g. comparison of own values and experiences with those presented in the text; issues, ideas or questions the text raises for her/him; experience with similar texts; attitudes towards subject/topic/character; personal interests
• Predictions and inferences about the view of the world presented in text
• Initial, tentative impressions about the statement(s) or view of the world the author/narrator /producer is making
• Features, codes and conventions of known text types/genres
• 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
• Explores different interpretations of the same event/idea/subject/topic in two sources and their impact on self as reader, e.g. current events in newspapers, on television, or radio
• Connects, in a trial-and-error fashion, her/his understanding of some characteristics of narrator/writer/producer to what s/he notices about the view of the world presented in the text, e.g. reads “between the lines” to locate apparent values/beliefs of a character/narrator in a story, understands the intent of a fast food ad, sees that an opinion excludes certain points of view 
• Communicates interpretation(s) of a text in an individual voice, referring to prior experience, own reading profile and understanding of texts as social constructs:
• Follows a process to compose, i.e. writes or produces own interpretation(s) of a text
• Interprets the view of the world in the text in different media, including mixed media, for a familiar audience
• Expresses own interpretation(s) with clarity, openness and confidence
• Uses an inquiry process and action research in collaboration with peers to organize and report information in nonfiction and/or popular texts of interest to young adolescents for a familiar audience

Moral Education

Competency One: Constructs a moral frame of reference

Puts life situations and moral references into perspective:

• Makes connections between meaningful situations, their requirements, the influences at play, and the presence of known values or social precepts
• Identifies his/her own moral references
• Explores the diversity of beliefs, customs, visions of human beings, values and social precepts related to the same situation
• Identifies differences, similarities and tensions between different opinions and viewpoints

Deliberates on the elements of a moral frame of reference:

• With others, looks for the words to define moral references
• Compares definitions, opinions and viewpoints
• Questions values and social precepts, their validity and how they are applied depending on the context
• Considers the effects of diverse visions of human beings on community life

Competency Two: Takes a reflective stance on moral issues:

Identifies the ethical issues of a situation

• Describes the situation
• Explains how and why the situation poses a moral or ethical problem
• Identifies the consequences of the problem on himself/herself, on others and on the environment  
• Draws upon a variety of information sources and the viewpoints of experts
• Analyzes the tensions that exist among different viewpoints, opinions, visions of human beings, values and social precepts
• Situates himself/herself in relation to the problem
• Expresses feelings generated by the problem
• Considers the viewpoints of classmates and those primarily concerned by the problem, and takes cultural references into account
• Identifies the reasons put forth in support of opinions and viewpoints
• Highlights the underlying visions of human beings and the social precepts and the values in question
• Explains the differences that exist

Imagines possible options and their consequences

• Proposes possible options and considers those of others
• Examines the consequences on himself/herself, on others and on society
• Makes a summary of the options and their possible consequences

Translates his/her choices into action

• Uses criteria to evaluate different options
• Expresses his/her preferred choice and gives the reasons and emotional factors behind his/her decision
• Delineates the individual and collective responsibilities entailed in his/her choice of options
• Explores individual and group ways of taking action