All of the activities suggested below can be used in isolation or as part of a larger lesson or unit.
For Lesson Plan One
The teacher will project Dorothea Lange's iconic
Migrant Mother
photo on the board, via Smartboard or similar technology. (An alternative to projecting the image would be to make photocopies of the image and pass them out to the students.) Students will observe details in the photo. The teacher will instruct students not to make assumptions about what is happening in the photo and lead a whole-class discussion about the details observed in the photo.
Students will be given two more images to observe in pair-share format: Norman Rockwell's painting
The Four Freedoms
(using a copy of the painting without the four freedoms stated on each panel) and a photo of the Tank Man protestor from Tienamen Square. The teacher will lead the students in a discussion about how objectively viewing the images differs from how students usually look at images. Students will make inferences about the meaning of the three images.
Guiding Questions
What was challenging about observing details in the images rather than making inferences about their meanings? Why?
How are you more or less confident about the images' meanings now that you've observed and noted the details? Why?
Assessment
In-class work done by students.
For Lesson Plan Two
The teacher will show students the caption Dorothea Lange wrote to accompany the photo used in the previous lesson. Students will compare the caption to their initial understanding of the photo's meaning. The teacher will lead a whole-class discuss on the comparison.
Students will follow the pair/share model and compare the captions of
Four Freedoms
and the Tank Man photo with their original assumptions. Then they will compare how the details they observed influenced their inferences.
The teacher will ask students to observe the details found in images of print and video advertisements (teacher's choice) as a whole-class activity. Students will follow the pair/share model to observe details found in additional print and video advertisements. Students will then compare the visual details of the advertisements to the text or voice-overs.
Guiding Questions
How do your observations about the images support the intended meaning behind them?
How does analyzing the details of the image develop your independent think about it?
Assessment
In-class work done by students. Additionally, students will be required to bring in print ads or links to television ads (via YouTube or other Internet sources) along with a log of observation about the visual details in the ads.
For Lesson Three
Teacher gives a mini-lesson (less than 15 minutes) on rhetorical devices and logical fallacy (logos, ethos, pathos and argumentum ad populum) and how they are used in advertising. The teacher will include a small lesson on the use of sound as a "pathos" device in commercial advertising. Teacher uses the same advertisements as used in the previous lesson for whole-class analysis of the rhetorical devices used in the ads. The teacher will use the same ads and to have students consider two things for each: purpose and audience. The same will be done with ads that the students have not yet analyzed in class.
Guiding Questions
Why did the advertiser create this particular ad in this particular way?
Who does the advertiser hope will pay attention to this ad and why?
How does the ad help you understand the advertiser's intentions?
Assessment
In-class work. Students should analyze rhetorical devices in a handful of print and television ads for homework and bring in the ads and/or their findings to share with the class.
For Lesson Four
Summary
This lesson extends the students' skills of observation and evaluation of rhetorical devices to their analysis of print journalism. This lesson also teaches them to distinguish news "facts" from opinion in print journalism.
Methods
The teacher will project or hand out a popular internet meme on a controversial issue. Students will examine the image and text and determine the audience of the meme, the meme's meaning and the rhetorical devices used to convey it.
The teacher will project one more "conventional" political cartoon for similar evaluation and analysis. The teacher will provide students with letters to the editor, editorial columns or 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.
Guiding Questions
How does the image help you understand the meaning of the meme or cartoon—or vice versa?
What word choices help you determine which rhetorical devices are being used in the text?
Assessment
Students can 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 read in the news.
