Media Literacy/Visual Arts Project

This past week we began a media literacy/visual arts project that will be completed at school and each student will earn a media mark and an art mark.  The students have been asked to design and movie poster or book cover that will attract an audience.  After learning about the conventions (characteristics) of movie posters and book covers, and an author's purpose and intended audience, we made an anchor chart about this information.  Then we created success criteria for our task.  From that information we generated a rubric so that the students will know in advance how their work will be evaluated.

The students must complete a rough draft, receive feedback from a peer and have a conference with me before embarking on their final product.  I hope the products will be top quality!

Along those lines, we had to deal with a significant amount of conflict related to this topic as the students were selecting their topic for their work.  I told them that they had to have watched the movie or read the book that will be the topic of their work, so that their work is authentic.  I am amazed at the movies that some students in our class have seen and the ones they wanted to use for their project.  I naturally set limits and they are only allowed to use movies that are rated PG or lower for this project.  If you are not familiar with what the movie rating system is or what students that are ten or eleven years old should be watching, please check out this link.

Continue to bring in your vocabulary word of the day when it is your turn.  The good news is that everyone was on time this past week.  The unfortunate news is that two of the words are not considered new words and one was even spelled incorrectly.  I model using them as they hang for all to see in our room.  I hope that the students are beginning to use them in their daily work and oral communication.  Watch for the photo in a few days when the pocket chart is full.