Lesson Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students should be able to demonstrate an ability to analyze a video, focusing on identifying audience and basic genre conventions. This lesson is designed to be an adaptable framework that can be used to teach multimodal composition analysis. That is, this lesson can be adapted to fit any stage of a unit/sequence in which students are ultimately asked to compose multimodally.
Materials Needed
- Projector/screen
- Device to project to screen
- Internet connection
Pre-class student work:
- Students should watch and create notes about the video “Lydia Heberling on How Reading Multimodal Literature Can Support Indigenous Sovereignty” (~21 minutes) before class.
- Students should have a working knowledge of the terms genre, mode, multimodality, context, stakes (researching these terms could be homework with a short recap at the beginning of this lesson)
- (optional) Students should have been introduced to an assignment in which they are being asked to compose multimodally.
Lesson Plan (45 minutes)
Warm Up: Free write (10 minutes)
Description
Choose a short clip from the video (like this one (13:30-18:46, about reading the Ti’at) and project it for the class.
Ask students to free write and associate with an aspect of this portion of the video.
Potential Guiding Questions:
What parts of this clip made you feel something?
How did you feel?
When?
What parts pulled you in?
What parts of this clip pushed you out?
Rationale
Asking students what “pulled them in” (what made them feel interested in the ideas) and what “pushed them out” (what made their mind wander or left them feeling bored) can be a productive way to start a discussion centered in a variety of analytical lenses, such as audience awareness, the rhetorical triangle, as well as genre conventions.
It may be productive to frame ideas of being “pulled in” vs “pushed out” for students if you’d like the discussion to remain focused on a specific lesson objective.
Alternatively, leaving the framing vague could lead to the generation of ideas and discussion topics that could become the focal point of a future class.
Small-group Discussion (15 minutes)
Description
Put students into small groups (3-4 work well).
Ask students to share the ideas from their free write with each other. Each group should create a list of things that pulled them in and a list of things that pushed them out.
Write each list on the board.
Ask each group to choose one item from each list and discuss why the item either pushed them out or pulled them in.
Potential Guiding Question
What about this section of the video pulled you in?
What did you notice about this section that is unique or interesting?What do you see?
Who is speaking?
What emotion is being expressed?
What is being told?
Ask each group to choose one person to share with the class.
Write this list of specific aspects of the video on the board.
Rationale
By asking students to identify and connect to their own emotional reactions, the discussion can become less theoretical and help students connect to the idea of audience awareness more directly.
This lesson is dedicated to building audience awareness, but the questions can be adapted to suit the language in your classroom, a different aspect of genre, or an entirely different genre.
Asking students to identify the specific aspects of a section of video that pulled them in can lead to a list of genre conventions that can be written on the board. This list could become a productive transition into a deeper discussion about audience awareness.
Targeted Small-group Discussion (15 minutes)
Description
Show the class the second section of this video (5:46-7:50) (about the critical aspect of this topic). If time allows, show the first clip again (13:30-18:46).
Ask students to choose one of the objects described in the video, such as the Ti’at or the wax cylinder (or, the video itself could be analyzed using these questions).
Ask students to use the following questions to create a worksheet that they will use when creating their own composition.
Rationale
Show the class the second section of this video (5:46-7:50) (about the critical aspect of this topic). If time allows, show the first clip again (13:30-18:46).
Ask students to choose one of the objects described in the video, such as the Ti’at or the wax cylinder (or, the video itself could be analyzed using these questions).
Ask students to use the following questions to create a worksheet that they will use when creating their own composition.
Ask students to discuss the questions with their small groups.
Guiding Questions:
What is the context of the object?
Who created it?
How is it distributed?
Who is this object for, and how do you know? (What signs do you see that it has been directed toward a specific audience?)
What is the author/creator’s relationship to the audience?
How would the message change for a different audience?
What are the stakes? What stakes does this audience have in the content of the object?
Ask each group to assign a new person to summarize their group’s discussion to the entire class.
Wrap-up (5 minutes)
Description
Ask these question:
Finally, what is the purpose of this composition?
What will be the purpose of your composition?
Rationale
This final question is an opportunity for students to realize all the earlier work informs this answer.
This is also an opportunity for students to think about their assignment and use the worksheet to define the audience they will target.
Potential Assignments that Bring Multimodality into the Classroom
This lesson can be adapted to introduce a variety of genres and modes. Leading students through this type of “reverse engineering” allows them to understand the process needed to create their own multimodal compositions.
Assignment Ideas
Ask students to choose a section of a video from the LCCS Series and translate it into a different genre.
Ask students to choose two videos from the LLC Series and create an infographic that compares and contrasts them.
Ask students to summarize key points from this video and create a series of Instagram posts that together create a campaign connected to the video’s purpose.