This unit incorporates a variety of strategies to engage a wide range of learning preferences. Individual, group and share/pair activities are all used throughout the lessons to promote and maintain engagement, and they can be modified as needed. Students will also use the same group of images for different purposes throughout the unit, which helps the students understand the many approaches they can take when observing and analyzing visual images.
The introductory lesson will teach students about how to objectively observe the details of visual images. Of emphasis is the need for students to slow down while they are observing a visual piece and really note what they are seeing versus what they think the image is about. Once students have practiced observing visual images, they can then begin to make inferences about the images' meanings. The teacher will use paintings and example of photojournalism for this lesson. Students will be required to observe what they see without making inferences about the images. Once students have completed this part of the assignment, they will pair in groups of two or more to discuss the details they have observed from these two images. After a few minutes, students will share out with the rest of the class.
The teacher will then lead the students in a discussion about how viewing these images for details—"the facts" of the images—was different from how they usually approach looking at visual images. For example, the teacher might ask, "Was it challenging to observe details in the images and not make inferences about their meanings? Why/why not? Give an example from one of the images." Another question might be, "Are you more or less confident about the images' meanings now that you've observed and noted the details? Why?" Using a similar modeling/pair/share lesson structure, students will then be guided to make inferences about images' meanings.
The second lesson builds on the students' skills of observation and compares and contrasts those observations with the conventional meaning of the images. Using the same images as in the first lesson but including the text that originally accompanied those image, students will compare the caption to their initial understanding of the photo's or painting's meaning. While this will be done as a whole-class activity, students will again follow the pair/share model. Students will be asked to compare how the details they observed influenced their inferences either for better or for worse. Ideally, students' observations and notes will lead them toward a better understanding of the images' meanings.
The third lesson introduces students to rhetorical devices to target and persuade audiences via advertising. Students will be asked to observe the details found in print and video advertisements. Ignoring text and/or voice-overs, students will be required to observe the advertisements and list the details found in their visual images. While it can be challenging to do this with familiar advertisements, it is often fun for students to look at familiar print or television ads with fresh eyes and analyze them. It is also useful to use a mix of ads, including current and older ads, ads for causes such as the ASPCA or political campaigns, and ads for commercial products. Foreign ads, wordless ads, and text-only ads can all be used to enhance or differentiate the lesson. Once again, this lesson can be accomplished by first doing it as a whole class exercise followed by a pair/share activity.
Once students are given a chance to analyze the visual details of familiar and unfamiliar advertising, they should be instructed, in a similar fashion, to observe and analyze the text (including voice-overs) of print and television ads. This will give students an opportunity to discuss how the visual images enhance the meaning of the advertisers' messages—and vice versa. Once again, this helps students more objectively understand the intended meaning behind the images they are viewing.
In the final of the four lessons, students will learn about rhetorical devices and a logical fallacy (logos, ethos, pathos and argumentum ad populum) and how they are used in advertising. Depending on the students, this lesson may be a mini-lesson or may be as long as a full class. The teacher will define the terms, possibly using a short PowerPoint file to illustrate examples. Then, using the same advertisements as used in the previous lesson, the teacher will lead students in a whole-class analysis of the rhetorical devices used in the ads. The teacher may want to consider using the whole-class model for at least two of the ads, since this can sometimes be a tricky task, and then release the students to pair/share on the rest. It should be noted that the teacher should also incorporate a small lesson on the use of sound as a device to create pathos in commercial advertising.
Once the rhetorical devices have been analyzed, the teacher will have the students return to the same ads and consider two things for each: purpose and audience. The teacher may also use the Question Formation Technique in which the students create a list of their own questions about the advertisements and then research the answers to some of those questions. As a follow-up assignment, students can observe a handful of print and television ads for homework and bring in the ads and/or their findings to share with the class.
By now, students will have developed enough skills to be able to identify rhetorical devices in advertising so that they will be able to create their own ad for their choice of commercial product or cause, either real or imagined. If the teacher chooses to assign such a project, this assessment gives the students the choice of subject as well as medium. Students can choose to create print (hard copy or electronic) or video ads that full of—or devoid of—text. Those who want to make a television commercial can use still images via free web-based programs such Animoto, or they can create actual commercials using technology on their Smartphones or cameras. Students can present their ads, which may be as short as 15 seconds or as long as a few minutes, to the entire class. As an additional assessment, students can be required to evaluate the rhetorical devices of their peers' ads for a quiz grade. This will also keep the students on-task and engaged during their peers' presentations.
To round out the unit, the teacher will extend these skills to evaluating and analyzing opinion pieces in magazines and newspapers. First, the teacher provides students with a popular internet meme on a controversial issue. Students will have a chance, as a whole class, to examine the image and text and determine the audience of the meme, its meaning, and the rhetorical devices used to convey it. Since many memes can be considered more modern versions of classic political cartoons (students are used to seeing them on social media websites), the teacher can include a selection of political cartoons to show how opinion and message can be conveyed using images and rhetorical devices in print journalism.
Extending student skills further to text-only analysis of rhetorical devices, the teacher can provide students with letters to the editor, editorial columns, and other opinion pieces from various print journalism sources. Students will then analyze these editorial selections for audience and purpose via evaluation of their rhetorical devices. This activity not only applies the students' new skills to text analysis, but it also teaches them to distinguish factual reporting in print journalism from opinion, a task students often struggle with, especially in the lower secondary grades. The teacher can assess this skill in a number of ways, from asking students to compare a news article on a topic to an editorial or letter to the editor on the same issue. Or students can write a letter to the editor on an issue about which they have read in the news.
Ultimately, this unit provides several opportunities and a multitude of media to assess and engage students in the learning of rhetorical devices in advertising and editorial opinion—and it helps them distinguish fact from opinion in journalism and advertising.