Levels 3 and 4

Achievement Objectives

Visual language: Viewing

Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Examples

Example 1

Achievement Objectives
Viewing: thinking critically; exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: making an advertisement

• In groups, students collect a range of magazine advertisements.
• Students explore the colours and shapes of logo symbols and a range of signs in the advertisements.
• Each group chooses one type of product, such as soap, cars, or biscuits. The group discusses how two advertisements for that type of product are constructed to make consumers view them in a particular way, and the effects of verbal language, symbols, and colour used in combination.

Assessment

• Each group records their findings and they are displayed and commented on.
• Groups make up an advertisement for a food product and discuss it with others, assessing the possible meanings and effects of each other's advertisements in terms of the combination of visual and verbal features that they have used.

Links With Other Strands
Presenting, Speaking, Listening

Example 2

Achievement Objectives
Viewing: exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: exploring humour and satire

• The teacher provides examples of cartoon strips and short cartoon films.
• In groups, students explore how cartoons combine visual and verbal language to achieve particular effects.
  
• Students examine some of the conventions of cartoon making, such as framing, speech bubbles of various kinds, pauses suggested by three dots, movement marks, animal characters, caricature, and sound effects.
• While viewing cartoons, students are encouraged to use terms such as dialogue, image, frame, story-line, comedy, and comic.
• In pairs, students re-create a brief event in cartoon-strip form.

Assessment

• Students and teacher assess their understanding of visual language conventions and the particular effects created.

Links With Other Strands
Presenting, Speaking, Listening
Related example in another strand at the same level: Reading, Example 3.

Example 3

Achievement Objectives
Viewing: exploring language; thinking critically

Teaching and Learning
Context: a study of the language of film

• Students watch selected scenes or one short clip from a television soap opera, several times.
• In groups, students watch for and discuss the characters in terms of their settings, appearance and dress, body language, gestures and expression, dialogue and use of voice, attitudes, and behaviour.
• The students analyse the interrelationships of these features.

Assessment

• Within the groups, each student chooses one of the characters and writes a description of his or her personality, referring in detail to evidence from visual and verbal elements of the text.
• Students discuss their character studies in their groups, comparing impressions and assumptions, and justifying their choices by reference to the film.
• The teacher observes and listens to the discussions, and assesses each student's understanding of how verbal and visual elements are combined to show meanings.

Extension Option

• This study could be integrated with a social studies unit through discussion of the extent to which the real-life social context is reflected in the television series.

Links With Other Strands
Writing, Speaking, Listening

Example 4

Achievement Objectives
Viewing: exploring language; thinking critically

Teaching and Learning
Context: a study of Pacific cultures

• The class listens to and views a range of music and dance representative of different countries, presented by members of the communities, or seen on film.
• Students listen to explanations of traditions and stories associated with the dance, and note new vocabulary.
• Students discuss how these ideas and stories are conveyed through rhythm and movement.
• In groups, students select an item of music or dance, and prepare an introduction to present to the class, explaining the ways in which the visual and verbal elements combine to develop the meaning, significance, or story.
• Individual students tell of, and respond to, a performance they have seen, relating it to their own experience.

Assessment

• The groups' introductions are assessed for evidence that important verbal and non-verbal features have been identified and explained.

Links With Other Strands

Presenting, Speaking, Listening

Example 5

Achievement Objectives
Viewing: exploring language

Teaching and Learning
Context: examining the impact of visual language on consumer products

• Students view two different cereal boxes and discuss what they notice about them.
• The teacher lists the verbal and visual features identified by the students, such as images, colour, layout, graphics, and messages.
• The teacher shows the students another cereal box, and, using the list of features, helps them to identify similarities and differences and to view features which they may not have noticed on the first boxes.
• The students gather a variety of cereal boxes over several days, talking informally with others about the verbal and visual features they find interesting.

Assessment

• Students are presented with the idea of a new brand of cereal and, in groups, describe what features should be on the box so that people will want to buy it.
  
• The teacher assesses students' understanding of the ways in which verbal and visual language features can be used to create particular effects.

Links With Other Strands
Speaking, Listening