Rationale

We imagine using this lesson with either 9th or 10th graders. The Regular Ordinary Swedish Mealtime (ROSM) video would work well with this age group, as it would be a great attention getter and would hopefully make them start questioning why we're watching such a strange video in class. We would watch ROSM first and then follow it with Rick Stein's BBC video in order to bring the class back down to a teachable level; while ROSM is a great attention getter, it's also so bizarre that it might get the students too excited to focus on the lesson.

When watched together, these two videos are great examples of how tone, characterization, and intended audience affect how a story is told. Both are instructional videos for how to make a carbonara-type pasta dish, but are wildly different. We want our students to begin thinking about the revision process, and how simple changes can make a large impact on the style of a paper. The terms become more than their dry definitions; they become tools the students can use and manipulate to build the piece they want. With this assignment, we're pushing students to question how one story can morph into another with the few changes we discuss, without losing the original message. This assignment will teach students to think critically about the pieces they read in the future. They'll no longer see the work as just text on a page, but as many different carefully-chosen components working together to tell a story. This will also teach the students to think critically about what they see on television. We hope this assignment will impact how they'll view many of the video images they encounter on a daily basis. News networks, for example, tell basically the same story, but it'll come across so differently based on the networks' biases and the intended audiences. Our overall goal is to help our students come to a greater understanding of how the revision process works and the decisions writers choose to make. Additionally, our lesson touches on the related topics of literary terms, genre, reflection pieces, analysis, observation, and connections between visual literacy and written literacy.

The first step will be to watch the videos as a class and have an introductory discussion as a whole. We think students will quickly see the differences in the videos and want to point them out. However, to help our students if they get stuck, we'll guide the discussion with the following questions to help get the students to think analytically:

What are specific elements that make each video different? How are the sounds different? Do they affect the feel of the video? How are the camera movements different? Do they have any affect on the feel? How do the narrators differ? Do they have different body language? How does their appearance, tone, and/or mannerisms affect how we interpret their story? How does the time of day during which the video was filmed affect the story? What elements of the two videos are the same? What is the common story? For all their differences, how are the two narrators alike? Does one tell the story more effectively than the other? What determines whether or not the story has been effectively communicated? If students mention the narrators' different accents, we would identify that trait as "voice." If they talk about the differences in cooking style, we would identify that as "style of writing." If they mention the tools used, we would identify that as "structure/mechanics." When they see how these terms work in the video, they should start to have a better understanding of how the terms work in their writing.

After this initial discussion we will divide the students into pairs. This project could become lengthy so it would be good to go ahead and have a plan for dividing the students, such as numbering off 1 and 2. This would keep the students moving and avoid any wasted down time. When the students break off into pairs, we'll provide examples for them to look over or consider. We will give them revisions of our own works that they can read, titles of remakes of old movies that they'd know of, and titles of remixes of popular songs. We'll also supply them with lists of terms and definitions to help them understand the material. These materials should help guide their in-depth discussion. They should continue to look beyond the obvious differences to see the underlying structures. Once they have had a chance to discuss in pairs, they should move onto choosing one of their pieces of writing and begin using the same discussion questions and observations on their story. This will be when their ideas over the components of the visual piece translate to the written piece. They should begin to formulate their list of revisions and alterations. Due to time constraints much of this section will be done at home for homework and completed in the next class period.

The final aspect of this assignment is the reflection essay. This will give the students the chance to bring everything they have learned together. Their papers should demonstrate that they have thought about the differences in the videos, what similar changes they could make to their own piece of writing, and their thought process behind these changes. We want the students to explain not only the changes they made but why they made these changes. This reflection paper should allow them the opportunity to show that they understand revisions and the elements behind a piece of visual and written media.

Possible challenges that we might encounter include students not being able to come up with anything for the reflection or struggling to articulate their revision process. We know that meta-cognitive thinking can be very challenging, so we would be ready to scaffold student discussion and guide them toward understanding their process. If students don't bring a revision piece for Day 2, we could provide a generic piece for them to work on -- a copy of our own writing, past students' writing, a passage from a book we're reading, etc. Students might not take the assignment seriously and choose to goof off with their friends instead. We want this assignment to have more of a relaxed feel so as not to scare the students away from this level of thinking, but if they don't take it seriously, we can spend individual time with that pair and focus their thinking, helping them along with the process until they're back on track. Another challenge would be students being too distracted by the humor of the ROSM video that they can't think critically. We hope to combat this challenge by playing the BBC video second to help bring down the energy level, but if some students are still too worked up, we could use the same individualized attention approach as we used for the students who don't take the assignment seriously. If a student forgets the revision plan at home or does not turn in all parts of the assignment, we could give them half credit for the revision plan (IF and only if we saw them working on it in class the day before), and just grade the reflection piece as planned.