Levels 7 and 8

Achievement Objectives

	Using static and moving images, students should:
Level 7	use and adapt production techniques and technologies to communicate information, ideas, narrative, or other messages for different purposes and audiences	Presenting
Level 8	use and adapt production techniques and technologies to communicate information, ideas, narrative, or other messages, integrating verbal, visual, and dramatic features to achieve a range of effects
	In achieving the objectives of understanding and using visual language, students should:
Levels 7 and 8	using appropriate terminology, identify, use, and evaluate the effectiveness of particular conventions of verbal and visual language in a range of genres	Exploring Language
Levels 7 and 8	identify, analyse, and evaluate the effects of combining verbal and visual features, relating the choice and use of verbal and visual features to particular purposes and audiences	Thinking Critically
Levels 7 and 8	select, interpret, and synthesise information from visual texts and present it effectively, using a range of visual and layout features and appropriate technologies for a variety of purposes	Processing Information

Achievement Objectives
Presenting: exploring language; thinking critically; processing information

Teaching and Learning
Context: studying novels selected from personal reading

The teacher and students discuss goals for seminars on characters from novels.
The teacher models an analysis of one character, and sets criteria with the class for a seminar presentation, including quality and quantity of information, references, and the effective use of visual media to clarify meanings.
Students, individually or in pairs, select a character from a novel of their choice, and plan a seminar. In developing their seminars, students might:
- use overhead projector transparencies to show the relationships between the character and other characters in the novel, in diagrammatic or other form, for example, a family tree;
- use video or still photography to demonstrate ideas for a film setting, using, for example, close-up or macro shots of maps, or photographs of the city or country in which the novel is set, and of the people, fashion, and transport of the period;
- use sound recording to record dialogue from the text or an interview with the character, with appropriate musical accompaniment.
Students present their seminars.

Assessment

The teacher and students evaluate the presentations for their effectiveness in analysing the ways in which characters are presented, and in interesting other students in the novel.

Links With Other Strands
Speaking, Listening, Reading, Viewing, Writing

Achievement Objectives
Presenting: exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: exploring a shared text, for example, a play by Shakespeare

After reading, hearing, or viewing the play, and discussing it, groups of students each choose an extract which develops to a moment of dramatic significance.
The class considers ways of presenting the point of climax as a 'freeze frame'.
Each group develops a presentation, selecting a starting point in the text which leads coherently to the moment of climax, and planning the action so that the characters are in place for the maximum visual impact at the moment of climax for the 'freeze frame'. They make decisions about the characters' position, stance, gesture, and facial expression.
Each group presents their selection, possibly in sequence if this has been planned by the class as a whole.
The 'freeze frames' are photographed, or the whole action recorded on video.

Assessment

The teacher and students discuss the effectiveness of the portrayal at the moment of the 'freeze frames', in terms of the audience expectations of what will follow.

Links With Other Strands
Reading, Speaking, Viewing, Listening
Related example in another strand at the same level: Listening, Example 2

Achievement Objectives
Presenting: exploring language; thinking critically; processing information

Teaching and Learning
Context: a study of communication in popular public messages

Students collect greeting cards, and, in groups, discuss their social contexts, conventions, purposes, and audiences.
Students and teacher analyse one card in detail, in terms of the combination of verbal and visual features which convey the meaning. They consider features, such as the use of imperatives, puns, script type or font, size and boldness of lettering, colour, and layout.
In groups, students create a new occasion for a greeting card, such as a children's day, students' day, teachers' day, midwinter day, or pets' day.
Each group produces a greeting card for their chosen day, using and combining appropriate verbal and visual features and techniques to communicate their message for their particular purpose and audience, to impress the purchaser and receiver of their card.

Assessment

Students assess each group's card and respond to how well the message is communicated by the selected features.
The teacher assesses the students' ability to combine verbal and visual features for a particular effect.

Links With Other Strands
Viewing, Speaking, Listening

Achievement Objectives
Presenting: exploring language; thinking critically

Teaching and Learning
Context: investigating music videos

The teacher and students collect some examples of music videos, and view, discuss, and evaluate them in terms of their messages, their conventions, and the use of verbal, visual, and dramatic features.
The soundtrack of another song is played to accompany the moving images of one video. Teacher and students discuss the effects.
In groups, students script and develop a storyboard for shooting their own music video, using and adapting production techniques appropriate to the music, the genre of music video, and the audience.

Assessment