LEARNING AND EVALUATION SITUATION
SECONDARY CYCLE ONE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS PROGRAM
Make a Teen Magazine
TEACHER'S GUIDE
This learning and evaluation situation consists of the following:
- a Teacher’s Guide
- a Student Booklet
Important note
This learning and evaluation situation is to be used to regulate learning. It is very structured and students are guided by the teacher. However, as students progress, they should be put in situations that are less guided.
This learning and evaluation situation contains the following documents:
- Teacher’s Guide
This document includes important information about the learning and evaluation situation, an overview of the situation and a guided step-by-step procedure.
- Student Booklet
The Student Booklet includes the tasks for this learning and evaluation situation.
- Web Site
The Web site contains information on the Unit. This allows teachers and students to access the unit using hypertext, an important form of “new” media literacy. This makes it very easy for the teacher to immediately reference all documentation with the click of a button.
Important Information
Make a Teen Magazineis one of many learning and evaluation situation (LES) produced by the Ministère for Secondary Cycle One Language Arts. It is to be used in Secondary Cycle One as a tool to teach and evaluate students during Cycle One.
This unit is to help students to demystify the media industry. More specifically, they will learn how a magazine is created by creating one themselves.
The focus of this unit is to regulate learning for Competency 2 (represents her/his literacy in different media)and Competency 3 (writes a variety of genres for personal and social purposes)
Notes about this Learning and Evaluation Situation
This unit should take about 12 - 20 classes to complete depending on the length of classes. It involves:
- a guiding question, e.g. Can kids create a magazine that serves the needs of the community?
- a problem to be solved, e.g.How can we inform our peers of the life they lead?
- a challenge to be met, e.g.Create and distribute a magazine for your peers
Tasks that are relevant and meaningful
Tasks in the LES are determined by answering one important question: What do students needto do to answer the guiding question, solve the problem or meet the challenge? Although the teacher guides the students through scaffolding, it is important that the students learn for themselves.
Teacher's Role in Evaluating to Regulate Learning
Students need to know what is expected of them and how they will be evaluated; be transparent with your students regarding the evaluation criteria and your expectations. Teachers should regularly inform students about their strengths and weaknesses and offer support.
Ongoing evaluation
As students carry out the various tasks in this unit, you will need to observe them in action and provide feedback. You will be teaching, prompting and guiding students throughout the unit. It is important to record your observations using tools such as observation grids, rubrics and/or anecdotal notes. The data you collect will also be used to report on students' development of competencies for report cards and other forms of communication.
Teachers need to know if the students are really “getting it,” so they are responsible to ensure the student organizes and maintains an integrated profile containing work from all the
competencies, and discusses it with the teacher in regular and ongoing evaluation conferences throughout the cycle. It is essential that students are assessed for learning, not only to assess what they have learned. Some of this assessment will not be graded, but rather used by the teacher to judge where the student is going, and the ongoing assessments might be seen as a “rudder” that helps to steer the students towards the correct path.
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Where is Home? Teacher’s Guide
Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport
Make a magazine
General Description...... 6
Broad Area of Learning...... 6
Cross-Curricular Competencies...... 6
SELA Competencies...... 7
Resources...... 8
Background Information for teachers...... 8
PREPARING...... 9
Activity 1:What is the anatomy of a magazine...... 9
Anatomy Rubric...... 10
CARRYING OUT THE TASKS
Activity 2:Journal 1...... 11
Annotated Bibliogrpahy Rubric...... 12
Activity 3:A Letter Home...... 13
Writing Rubric...... 13
INTIGRATING MEDIA...... 14
Activity 4:The “Pitch”...... 14
Activity 4:Creating a newspaper...... 14
EXTENSION TASKS...... 24
Bibliography...... 26
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Where is Home? Teacher’s Guide
Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport
TEEN MAGAZINE
General Description
Students explore media by creating a media text of their own. They create a student newspaper empowering them by making them aware of how to create a magazine as well as acquainting them with the codes and conventions of this media. This will help in the construction of identity since they will learn what it means to be students in high school as well as aiding them in creating a world view by demystifying print media.
Broad Area of Learning
•Media Literacy
The context of the unit is creating a media artefact (magazine) for the school population. The magazine is about the school, and so the students can research the contents of the articles themselves, becoming the primary source of information rather than citing other sources. The unit teaches media awareness in the following ways:
–Students will develop an awareness of place and influence of the media
–They will gain an understanding of media representation of reality
–They will use media related materials and communication codes
–They will gain knowledge of and respect for individual and collective rights
•Personal and career planning
–Students develop self-knowledge and awareness of his/her potential and how to fulfill it.
–They are given a chance to recognize their talents, strengths, interests and personal and career aspirations.
–They are given a taste for challenges and sense of responsibility for his/her successes and failures.
–They will also develop a familiarity with the resources of the school.
•Health and Well Being: Self-awareness
–By studying what teens are, children develop awareness of his/her basic needs
–They gain self-affirmation since they will learn that other teens like what they like
–They fulfil a need for recognition of both themselves and their peers
Cross-Curricular Competency
•Use information
–Students will research and select information to include in journal entries.
–They gather informationand select what is useful
–They recognize various sources and understand the uses of each
–They will put information to useto answer questionswhile respecting copyright
•Solve problems
–Students will deal with situations through negotiation and problem solving
–They will analyze their problems and formulate possible solutions
•Exercise critical judgment
–They developpersonal opinions on a variety of issues that they will write/research
–They will form an opinion on media
–They must express their judgements
–They must qualify her/his judgement with others in group work (Conflict)
•Use creativity:
–Students will imagine ways to proceed. (plan first)
–They will become familiar with the situation (make them research before)
–They will imagine ways to proceed. (plan first)
–They will select the most effective way to present his/her text visually.
•Adopt effective work methods:
–They must consider all aspects
–They must plans and complete tasks at various stages of unit
–They must employ necessary resources(plan and Bibliography)
•Uses information and communications technologies (optional)
English Language Arts Competencies
•Competency 2: Represents her/his literacy in different media (assessed)
•Competency 3: Reads and listens to written, spoken and media texts (not assessed)
•Competency 4: Writes a variety of genres for personal and social purposes (assessed)
Required Materials
- Teachers Booklet
- Student Booklet for each student.
- Copies of the selected evaluation tools (Teacher's Resource Booklet, p. 10 to 14).
- Classroom library of magazines as models
- Cameras (digital or analogue)
- Computers with word processors and printer or paper, scissors and glue
Useful Resources
Books
How to make a magazine
Videos
The Paper Although some language may be inappropriate, there is a scene involving the daily discussion of who will cover what story and how. It is a great model of how a newspaper (as well as a magazine) operates on a daily basis and how work is distributed.
Down with Love. A tribute to the Musical-Comedy genre of the fifties, there are several scenes depicting the role of an editor-in-chief and how stories are chosen.
What Women Want. This would be a great film for the marketers, but there is also a scene cornering how to “pitch” and idea which would be useful to all students doing this unit.
Web sites
Background Information for Teachers
Why study “magazines”
By the end of cycle One, students are beginning to think about their identity and what it means to be a teen. They may already buy magazines depicting teen trends and fashions and may already question the validity of these sources. They will also begin to develop an interest in media in general, and empowering them by having them create their own sources of information is a useful way to increase self-esteem.
OVERVIEW OF THE LEARNING AND EVALUATION SITUATION
Here is an overview of the learning and evaluation situation. A detailed procedure begins on the next page.
Activity / Materials needed / EvaluationPREPARING TO CARRY OUT THE TASK /
- Teacher introduces the topic.
- Look at magazines (codes and conventions). Class discussion as to what goes into a magazine. Students decide what role they would like, and must write a journal answering the questions found in Journal 1.
- Teacher gives handout (Anatomy of a magazine).
- Students are told to create a “Pitch” for their ideas. Each student must present four products and justify their choice of which of the four should go into the magazine. This can be presented orally or using Power Point when possible.
- Students must write up “codes and conventions” of their job (writer, photographer, marketer, etc.)
- Editors and editor in chief must create a schedule for the entire class to follow and present it to the class so all deadlines are known in advance.
CARRYING OUT THE READING TASKS /
- Create Power Point presentations and present them before completing the magazine. Editors and editors in chief have the final say as to what goes into the magazine.
Create magazine in class. It is very important to coordinate photographers with writers and marketers with writers since the stories and ads cannot be completed before pictures are taken / Various rubrics for each job (writers rubric, marketers rubric, etc.)
Students must revise work based on editor’s comments. / Student's Resource Booklet, p. 4
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Where is Home? Teacher’s Guide
Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport
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Where is Home? Teacher’s Guide
Ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport
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Schedule: Teacher’s Resource
“The production process has three recursive stages: pre-production, production and post-production. The students, working in a collaborative group, create media texts about topics of ideas of interest that have been negotiated with the teacher. By producing texts collaboratively with peers, students put into practice their knowledge of how the media work, and develop a more sophisticated understanding of this” (QEP, 25).
The schedule is tentatively planned for twenty hours of class spread out over six weeks.
A class is anticipated to be between fifty minutes and one hour in length.
TaskDay implemented
Specific Tasks: Introduce topic, show video Day 1
Journal 1Day 2
Anatomy of a magazineDay 3
Schedules Day 4
Final scheduleDay 5
Codes and Conventions Day 6
Journal 2Day 6
BibliographyDay 7
Work on stories and preparing “Pitch”Days 7-10
PitchDay 11
Editing to create final productDays 12-14
Editor’s Final Pitch – entire magazineDay 15
Peer EvaluationDay 16
Self EvaluationDay 17
“The approach to language, discourse, text, and genre in the new SELA program for Cycle One is related to their social purposes and functions, so that students are aware not only of the structures and features of genre in different texts but of the inherently social messages and meanings they carry. Being able to read beneath the surface of the discursive and generic features of the different spoken, written, and media texts we encounter in our daily lives in an essential skill.” (QEP Languages p. 3).
Resources Needed:
- This unit is easier to do if you have regular access to computers. However, they are not essential. Options are provided should you chose to work without computers.
- TV and VCR (first day)
- LCD Projector and screen (if using computers)
- Cameras
- Film if using analog camera
- Library access during the first few days
- Old magazines for exemplars
Day 1
The introduction is essential in establishing this work. Begin with a video clip from “Down with Love,” or “What Women Want” or any short video clip you feel would demonstrate work at a magazine and/or the notion of a “Pitch.” This should lead to a discussion of magazine construction. Then hand out Document 2, “Magazine Project Student Handout” and explain. This document gives an overview of tasks within a magazine. Give students five minutes to choose department/roles (keep a list of their choices, you may have to re-assign some roles if too many choose the same job). Once they have chosen their roles, tell them to break into groups of three by job and hand out “Journal 1.” They must complete “Journal 1” for the next class, so it becomes homework if not completed.
Day 2
Pick up homework (Journal 1)
Negotiations take place between the teacher and the students about the topic of the magazine and the targeted audience. You can guide them towards writing for their peers, and so the topic should be relevant for their age group. Both the audience and the topic should be determined by the end of the class. Introduce “Document 3 –Anatomy.” Explain and show an example.
Anatomy of a picture:
After discussing the exemplar, each student must create their own “Anatomy” related to their “job.” For example, the photographers pick a photo from a magazine and dissect it according to the model above. If “Anatomy” is not finished in class, it becomes homework to be submitted on Day 3.To complete this assignment, they must use references, and so must submit a bibliography.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
Explain to the students that they are not to do the Anatomy assignment “off the top of their heads;” but rather, they must research their role and list sources in a Bibliography. Remind them that the Bibliography is graded, so have them show you what they have done after each assignment, but don’t grade until the end of the unit. Each student is responsible for their own Bibliography even when completed in a group
Day 3
Pick up Anatomy Assignment. Evaluate with Anatomy Rubric.Day 3 is pivotal for the editors who must begin organizing what is needed to complete the magazine. On this day, work begins on actual copies to be used for pitch. At this point, the editors will need guidance understanding that they must organize the work of the other students.
Writers and marketers must make specific requests for pictures from the photographers, so the writers must have chosen their lead stories. At this point, it is crucial that the teacher ensures the editors are leading, otherwise, everyone is waiting for someone else to do a job for them.
At his point the “Pitch” is explained (see Document 5), and the students are given a deadline of two weeks to produce their team product. This should get the students motivated! The pitch should be weighed at about 25% of the unit grade.
Day 4
Class begins by a teacher-led session in which the codes and conventions of each department are posted onto the wall chart.
Handout “codes and conventions” sheet (Document 6), and put students in groups based on their jobs. Students must discuss the codes and conventions of their job to demonstrate a thorough understanding. If they are not finished, it becomes homework. (N.B. Editors must research codes and conventions of an editorial, not a story).
Simultaneously, the Editors-In-Chief meet with department editors to discuss the schedules and compose the class schedule, determining departmental needs (See Document 7 “Scheduling handout”). Each department must create a tentative schedule. The editors for each department meet with the Editors-In-Chief to negotiate a final master schedule The Editors-In-Chief must create a general schedule for the entire group outlining deadlines and tasks to be preformed by the various departments, and present it in the following class.
TROUBLESHOOTING:
“My students don’t know how to communicate their needs to one another.”