Media Literacy IN the Classroom

     In middle and high school the closes we got to this type of literacy was making countless videos.  These were mostly for our language classes and once and a while for an ELA class.  Using this type of media though was always something that the class enjoyed and looked forward to.  Maybe once a year we would watch a movie version of a book we read but there was hardly ever a discussion following the book - maybe just a few fill in the blank type of questions.  I believe that this type of literacy can and should be so much more than that.

     I discussed last time that I was thinking of using this type of literacy as an assessment.  Know I am thinking of combining this with the journal entries.  While originally I didn't want the students blogging for this assignment the more I think about it, a blog might be just what it needs.  This medium would allow students to post pictures, music and videos along with their words.  I have been using a website called tumblr a lot lately and was thinking that this type of stream of contentiousness blogging might be a great project for this unit.  I am still contemplating this idea and am very open to suggestions.

Thoughts on Assessment for the Unit Plan

Looking at the outline from last weeks blog post I cannot help but mention how broad it is.  I began to look at assessment today and narrow down what I want to be teaching.  Looking at the book that I wan to teach and the standards - 8.4.3.3 in the Minnesota 8th grade language arts standards would work really well.  The standard talks about how scenes from the book or lines of dialogue can be analyzed to learn more about the characters and how they effect the decisions made within the book.  The characters are so strong in this book (Looking for Alaska by John Green) that they would prove a great area of study and lend well to the overall theme of the unit being Identity.  The other standards that I may include would be 8.7.10.10 which has to do with writing on a regular basis - I may use this in the form of a journal that the students could later use to help with their final project.  For the final project I want to include multimedia so some of those standards will be used as well - possibly 8.9.8.8.  The final project will have them look at themselves and how they see themselves.  They will create some type of multimedia project and present it in some form to the class.  They will have some choice in what this project will look like though.  Knowing I want to do this assignment - I will have the students work on pieces of this during their journal entries and in class discussion and small group discussions.  I will continue to look at this book and make sure that this is what I want to be teaching but so far so good!