Lesson on visual grammar – teacher provides resources. Students are introduced to visual concepts such as (create a list on the board for future reference):
-Characters -Reading path(s) -Vectors -Framing -Cultural and situational context -Colour -Modality -Salience -Ideal vs. Real ·Students are given the examples in context, so that they can relate this knowledge to subsequent lessons. Class is divided into 2 and is provided a sample visual text, which they must annotate à work samples will be collected.
Go through this as a class, discuss results and add any additional knowledge/factors.
Lesson 2 (filler lesson)
Students will apply knowledge from previous lesson to create their own definitions and examples for each of the concepts. Created on cartridge paper (A3 size). Allocate a part of the room which will ultimately be transformed into the ‘Visual Grammar Wall’. This will provide assistance in subsequent lessons as students can refer to this constantly throughout unit.
Lesson 3 (PART A) ·Students apply their prior knowledge to annotate the selected resource ·Teacher guides students to the completion of a Venn Diagram using selected insects and dragons ·Individually students complete the ‘common’ middle section of the Diagram ·Students play Celebrity Heads with the view to solidify knowledge of visual grammar concepts
Lesson 4 (PART B) ·Teacher reads students a poem on insects/dragons – questions how they know if this is a poem or not? ·Have poem projected on OHP/Smart Board, students come up and underline adjectives in one colour, nouns in another ·Teacher brings around mystery bag – inside are images of insects and dragons. Each student picks a picture and must write a poem about the insect/dragon they picked. ·Constraints: the poem must rhyme, has to have minimum of 10 adjectives and must be minimum of 10 lines (can increase for more able students) ·Students transform their poem into a Shape Poem – teacher supplies template of insect or dragon, and students can write the poem around the outside or (for longer poems) fit it inside ·As conclusion, students present their poems to the class, and teacher picks students to identify an adjective from the poem they just heard
Lesson 5 – (filler lesson) ·Students are asked to imagine a fictitious insect or dragon. Students sketch a model design of imaginary insect or dragon roughly on a piece of paper, including labels detailing the types of materials suitable for parts of the model. ·Students are provided with a range of recyclable materials with which students create a 3D model of their imaginary insect or dragon. Materials may include the following: newspaper, tins, cartons, plastic bottles, string, skewers, plastic bags, etc. Students are encouraged to be creative in their use of materials, whilst thinking about the reason for creating their model and how the materials can be used to convey a particular meaning or intention.
Lesson 6 (PART C) ·Based on knowledge established in lessons 1-3, students view several advertisements and identify the visual features. They also determine an audience and how the visual features work towards connecting with the audience ·Students use this knowledge to create an advertisement selling their Insect/Dragon which they created previously ·As conclusion, students present their posters to the class, using the required metalanguage and explaining why they used certain visual techniques, and also the intended audience for their ad.
Lesson 7 – (PART D)
Students take digital photos of the sculptures they made previously
·Students will be required to use their photo to create a context (scene) for the insect/dragon by using photo-editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop ·Students must include: oColour oVectors oFraming ·Students must also use visual and textual aspects such as speech bubbles or thought bubbles. As well, students create a short paragraph to accompany their edited image. ·In addition, on completion of the visual/textual aspect, students will voice-record themselves reading their short paragraph, and will add this voice-recording to the frame, so that when they present their frame the voice-over plays along.
Lesson 8 – (PART E)
Scaffold the process of creating a wiki
Students learn how to put images, video clips, sounds files, etc onto their practice wiki page
Lessons 9and 10 – RICH TASK
Wiki – Groups of 4-5 students. They make a page on the wiki in which they have to put sound, image, text.
To reach the intended outcome, VAS2.3, students are to create the wiki with the goal that it will help fellow students to understand insects, dragons, and literacy (visual and written), and the various interpretations possible for understanding these concepts. Preferably, the intended audience should be the rest of the grade OR the grade below. Therefore, an ‘overview’ page should be created as a class expressing this goal, for example: “hey fellow students, our class, 4-W just did a unit on Insects and Dragons and this is what we learnt!”
Students each create their own page, like a book! They MUST include these things:
- A scanned image of the shape poem that students have created in the Main Lesson 2.
- A scanned image of the advertisement that students created in the Main Lesson 3.
- The multimodal text created in the Main Lesson 4 (edited image, short paragraph, and voice recording).
- Factual information on an insect – a few sentences (more advanced students must include statistics, different types of that insect etc.)
- A visual component (such as image of their sculpture, of their work samples throughout the unit, pictures from google etc.)
- A backing track/sound component (for example, David Attenborough voice clips, naturalistic sounds, own student voice-recordings etc.)
- colourful text, background
- formatting (bold, italics, underline, larger/smaller text, centre-alignment etc.)
- a crossword, hangman or word-quiz game which requires others to guess words related to visual grammar, written grammar, and general insect/dragon concept.
As a conclusion, students present their individual wiki page to the class. They must justify why they have made certain decisions regarding formatting, layout, content etc. Finally, as a group they should present their page to their intended audience, i.e. the rest of the grade OR the grade below.
- Lesson on visual grammar – teacher provides resources. Students are introduced to visual concepts such as (create a list on the board for future reference):
- Characters- Reading path(s)
- Vectors
- Framing
- Cultural and situational context
- Colour
- Modality
- Salience
- Ideal vs. Real
· Students are given the examples in context, so that they can relate this knowledge to subsequent lessons. Class is divided into 2 and is provided a sample visual text, which they must annotate à work samples will be collected.
· Students apply their prior knowledge to annotate the selected resource
· Teacher guides students to the completion of a Venn Diagram using selected insects and dragons
· Individually students complete the ‘common’ middle section of the Diagram
· Students play Celebrity Heads with the view to solidify knowledge of visual grammar concepts
· Teacher reads students a poem on insects/dragons – questions how they know if this is a poem or not?
· Have poem projected on OHP/Smart Board, students come up and underline adjectives in one colour, nouns in another
· Teacher brings around mystery bag – inside are images of insects and dragons. Each student picks a picture and must write a poem about the insect/dragon they picked.
· Constraints: the poem must rhyme, has to have minimum of 10 adjectives and must be minimum of 10 lines (can increase for more able students)
· Students transform their poem into a Shape Poem – teacher supplies template of insect or dragon, and students can write the poem around the outside or (for longer poems) fit it inside
· As conclusion, students present their poems to the class, and teacher picks students to identify an adjective from the poem they just heard
· Students are asked to imagine a fictitious insect or dragon. Students sketch a model design of imaginary insect or dragon roughly on a piece of paper, including labels detailing the types of materials suitable for parts of the model.
· Students are provided with a range of recyclable materials with which students create a 3D model of their imaginary insect or dragon. Materials may include the following: newspaper, tins, cartons, plastic bottles, string, skewers, plastic bags, etc. Students are encouraged to be creative in their use of materials, whilst thinking about the reason for creating their model and how the materials can be used to convey a particular meaning or intention.
· Based on knowledge established in lessons 1-3, students view several advertisements and identify the visual features. They also determine an audience and how the visual features work towards connecting with the audience
· Students use this knowledge to create an advertisement selling their Insect/Dragon which they created previously
· As conclusion, students present their posters to the class, using the required metalanguage and explaining why they used certain visual techniques, and also the intended audience for their ad.
- Students take digital photos of the sculptures they made previously
· Students will be required to use their photo to create a context (scene) for the insect/dragon by using photo-editing programs such as Adobe Photoshop· Students must include:
o Colour
o Vectors
o Framing
· Students must also use visual and textual aspects such as speech bubbles or thought bubbles. As well, students create a short paragraph to accompany their edited image.
· In addition, on completion of the visual/textual aspect, students will voice-record themselves reading their short paragraph, and will add this voice-recording to the frame, so that when they present their frame the voice-over plays along.
- A scanned image of the shape poem that students have created in the Main Lesson 2.
- A scanned image of the advertisement that students created in the Main Lesson 3.
- The multimodal text created in the Main Lesson 4 (edited image, short paragraph, and voice recording).
- Factual information on an insect – a few sentences (more advanced students must include statistics, different types of that insect etc.)
- A visual component (such as image of their sculpture, of their work samples throughout the unit, pictures from google etc.)
- A backing track/sound component (for example, David Attenborough voice clips, naturalistic sounds, own student voice-recordings etc.)
- colourful text, background
- formatting (bold, italics, underline, larger/smaller text, centre-alignment etc.)
- a crossword, hangman or word-quiz game which requires others to guess words related to visual grammar, written grammar, and general insect/dragon concept.