3 OVERVIEW Summary: Students will be reading the novel Sidekicks by Jack D.

Ferraiolo, and recognize that there is always another side to every story. Students will understand that not everything is what it appears to be in text, the media, and in society. Towards the end of the unit, students will create a persuasive video advertisement about a product that theyd like to sell. They will present their advertisements for the class and in the local public library. Students will be able to identify multiple representations in text and the media, recognize a storys clear and hidden messages, and demonstrate tactics that are used to captivate a large public audience. Overarching EQ: What is reality? Overarching EU: Students will understand that there are multiple perspectives in every text. Rationale: Students will engage in and understand the topic of clear and hidden representations as it will help generate their personal judgments and questions regarding texts, experiences and the life course. They will be reading the novel Sidekicks as a tool to better understanding the theme of misrepresentations within human behavior and society. Students knowledge of critical literacy will be utilized to enhance of their reading, writing, and listening skills. By identifying various perspectives and representations, students can construct a firm personal judgment based on their prior knowledge, skills, and experiences. Students will produce a persuasive video production advertising a product theyd wish to sell to a specific audience. They will write and record their oral speech and display their advertisements to classmates and in the local public library. 1. Administrators The components of a narrative and video advertisement complement the components and form of a written essay. Practice with narrative writing and real-life acting will help students improve their voice, purpose, and structure. The experience and knowledge theyll gain from the assignments and culminating project will be utilized as a method of scaffolding the Regents exam and other standardized tests. Digital video production is a composing activity similar to, but often more engaging than, writing text. Students must produce an introduction, body, and conclusion.

4 They must edit and revise and scrutinize the work spatially, musically, socially, emotionally, and technically (Finn 214). Students will be motivated to participate and create works that are comparable to the writing process used on standardsbased tests. In addition, as students practice how to write persuasively, they will in turn learn the skills to produce a strong argumentative paper. 2. Students Students will discover that all text is targeted towards a particular audience and for a particular purpose. The topic of perceived representations is highly meaningful to students since they come in contact with written and spoken texts every day. Teacher will motivate students to engage in this unit by touching on popular controversial issues, reality TV programs, propaganda, historical texts, and medias misrepresentations, influence, and impact on them and their generation. 3. Colleagues/practitioners of critical pedagogy/empowering education This thematic unit will promote students lifelong learning by emphasizing the importance of personal perspectives, judgments, and justifications. Students will be taught to read texts with a questioning mind, and to question text and authority. The practice of constant questioning will transfer to make meaning of daily life affairs, relations and communications. Our goal is to foster political learners who take a firm position on an issue and agitate the system or status quo. Therefore, we need to involve students in probing the social factors that make and limit who they are andhelp them reflect on what they could be (Finn 205).This unit will help them reflect not only on their individual lives but on their society and how society shapes them in good and bad ways (Finn 206). Our students must be encouraged to use critical skills to analyze texts and understand the power of literacy, and as a result, use these skills to read, write, and create politically.

Project-based Learning: The rationale of this unit is for students to challenge representations of [multimodal] text, its messages, and the world. According to Barrel, PBL engages students in life as we know it, full of fascinating problematic situations worth thinking about, investigating, and

5 resolving (3). Students will meet with a multitude of tricky situations in life, and theyre responsible for constructing logical meanings and firm decisions on their own. Therefore, by reading historical and multimodal texts with a questioning mindset, theyll come to an understanding about the authors purpose and meaning, and then construct their own reasoning without being persuaded by the source. The culminating project will consist of composing a video advertisement on a product of choice. They will use persuasive and figurative language and diction to convince audiences to buy their product. Their appearance and body language will reflect the intentional message, tone and purpose. Interdisciplinary Justification: English language arts will be stretched to embrace other disciplines of history, culture, economics, and politics. Controversial articles, images, and/or video clips about each branch of knowledge will be individually and collectively interpreted. Based on students knowledge and experiences, they will brainstorm just/unjust actions and behaviors, and why each is deemed just/unjust. This unit could be taught in collaboration with a history class. History students will state various historical facts, data and events. ELA students will debate and decipher other possible perspectives and representations. All students will declare the target audience and intended purpose.

Respect for Difference: We are made up of a widely diverse group of people who use different social languages in different settings. Students will demonstrate codeswitching and communicate with one another in various settings using corresponding language use (example: when speaking in the home, ones language is more formal. When speaking to a friend at recess, language is much more informal.) The objective is for students to recognize that within each setting there is an intended purpose, message, and representation to be received by the target audience.

Assessments: Throughout the unit, students are assigned to read chapters in the

6 class novel Sidekicks by Jack D. Ferraiolo, and answer the corresponding questions. Students will also read other persuasive texts and preview influential video clips regarding issues in and by the media. Written homework assignments are handed in and graded for completion and authentic effort, not correctness. The final culminating production is recorded and each video ad is shown to an audience in the local public library. Students will selfassess their actions, language, behavior, and technique in-class, and write a final 3-4 page self-reflection composition on their processes and the learning experience. Students will have the opportunity to revise and re-submit this final essay. Also, students will publish their digital advertisements on YouTube. Classmates will assess one another as they preview and comment on at least three published ads on the social networking site. In addition, viewers will identify: target audience, purpose, multiple perspectives, what is clearly represented, what is implied/hidden, tactics the speaker used for persuasion, as well as provide constructive feedback criticism. Formative Assessments: Self evaluations Peer evaluations Close observation Cooperation with teachers feedback Questioning strategies Summative Assessments: Persuasive video advertisement Final self reflection composition Skills comprehension