2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
Elementary School
Middle
School
Key Idea: Humans communicate in all sorts of ways.
Rationale: At the elementary level, students should be introduced to the wide range of possibilities for human expression and given the opportunity to create using different mediums and formats. This broad exposure provides a foundation for understanding the conventions of different mediums.
Sample Instructional Content:
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Students are introduced to a wide variety of human communication tools, with a strong emphasis on the creative arts.
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Students are given the opportunity to explore multiple mediums, such as poetry, dance, drawing, and debate, to create authentic learning products.
Related Common Core Learning Standards
CC.K.R.L.5 Craft and Structure: Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).
CC.1.R.L.5 Craft and Structure: Explain major differences between books that tell stories and books that give information, drawing on a wide reading of a range of text types.
CC.1.R.L.4 Craft and Structure: Identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.
CC.2.R.L.4 Craft and Structure: Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.
CC.3.R.L.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting).
Related AASL Standards
1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.
1.2.3 Demonstrate creativity by using multiple resources and formats.
2.1.6 Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings.
Key Idea: Different mediums allow for different forms of creative expression. All types of media have production limits and medium constraints, which affect the message.
Rationale: At this level, students begin to examine the benefits and limitations of different media formats. They also learn how to identify structural characteristics of different types of media formats.
Sample Instructional Content:
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Students explore genres of literature, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each for particular messages.
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Production limits, especially economic limits, are considered in greater depth.
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Students analyze formats to learn the typical rules, practices, features of each.
Related Common Core Learning Standards
CC.6.R.L.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Compare and contrast the experience of reading a story, drama, or poem to listening to or viewing an audio, video, or live version of the text, including contrasting what they “see” and “hear” when reading the text to what they perceive when they listen or watch.
CC.6.R.L.9 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Compare and contrast texts in different forms or genres (e.g., stories and poems; historical novels and fantasy stories) in terms of their approaches to similar themes and topics.
CC.7.R.L.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Compare and contrast a story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).
CC.8.R.I.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums (e.g., print or digital text, video, multimedia) to present a particular topic or idea.
CC.8.R.L.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.
Related AASL Standards
1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.
1.2.3 Demonstrate creativity by using multiple resources and formats.
2.1.6 Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings.
High
School
Key Idea: Every form of media has an underlying syntax - a set of rules, practices, and features that distinguish it from other mediums.
Rationale: At this level, students analyze increasingly sophisticated messages across a variety of media formats, including film, speeches, and multimedia. Having grasped the foundational structure, students also begin to explore deconstructing these formats to create powerful new messages.
Sample Instructional Content:
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Students evaluate the effectiveness of the media for the given message and are able to identify the features of the medium which contribute to this effectiveness.
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Students critically analyze and discuss the choices of creators.
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Students create products that reflect high-level mastery of a particular format or genre.
Related Common Core Learning Standards
CC.9-10.R.I.6 Craft and Structure: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.
CC.9-10.R.I.7 Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.
CC.11-12.R.I.5 Craft and Structure: Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
CC.11-12.R.I.6 Craft and Structure: Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness, or beauty of the text.
Related AASL Standards
1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual, visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.
1.2.3 Demonstrate creativity by using multiple resources and formats.
2.1.6 Use the writing process, media and visual literacy, and technology skills to create products that express new understandings.
An Interactive Pathfinder
for School Librarians and Education Professionals