SENIOR ENGLISH: PERSPECTIVES IN THE MEDIA
MONTHLY SCOPE AND SEQUENCE

September

1. Team Flags: similarities
2. What books would you like to read?

Frankenstein
Fahrenheit 451
The Time Machine

3. How many are college-bound? 10

4. Syllabus

5. Individual Map

6. College Planning:

Application Process
Email me application essay questions with your name and college name
Financial Aid: FAFSA and talk by counselor (Stacie Syverson)

7. Senior Project topic and service

8. Definition of Media

media • noun1 the means of mass communication, especially television, radio, and newspapers collectively. 2 plural of MEDIUM.

   — USAGE The word media comes from the Latin plural of medium. In the normal sense ‘television, radio, and the press collectively’, it often behaves as a collective noun (for example like staff), and can be used with either a singular or a plural verb. Although some people regard the singular use as incorrect, it is now generally accepted in standard English.

7. Class list of media

8. Class definition of Perspective: A view upon a subject set from a bias, value or moral.

Pike and Wargo:

Hi Bev,
We moved to Snohomish to be closer to family! We are so happy to have the grandparents close to the kids!
If you type "Teaching Media Literacy" into google, you will get a TON of free information! I belive media literacy org. has a great teacher package. Megan Hensler photocopied much of my material for future use, and I know she would be happy to share that with you. Most of my curriculum is currently packed as I do not have a new position as of yet, but when I unpack my things, I can send you my sylabus and such. There are so many areas to go with Media Lit. Don't be afraid, seniors can be irritating, but they really seem to enjoy the class. We covered the still image, advertising, political rhetoric (as it was the election year), media news, diversity and gender in TV, animation, fairy tales in lit and in film, and we read "Their Eyes Were Watching God", and "Brave New World". I also had the students read two independent books- one non fiction about a media topic, and one fiction novel that had become a movie. They did projects with both of these books.
I hope this helps. Ian will be teaching this as well next year and he has some ideas. I did not connect with any other teachers from other schools.
Have a great summer!
Heidi

BOOKS

1984 - 17 copies
Brave New World - (soft bound) 31; (hard bound) 58.
Dracula - 35
Frankenstein - 28
Fahrenheit 451 - We don't have it.
The Time Machine - 54

WARGO

>>> Ron Wargo 07/07/05 11:05 AM >>>
Bev,
Sorry I’m slow getting back to you. I’ve been out of town since school ended and I’m just now getting caught up.
When I taught the Perspectives class the year before last, I was unable to find any curriculum in the building. There are a lot of good ideas on the Internet, but I chose to use the class time to examine the purpose of the media in as many different formats as possible:
--the ranges and differences between the different news agencies (foreign and domestic, televised and written)
--news magazines/journals, pop magazines, e-zines
--advertising, targets, ethics, efficacy
--political speeches, government, PAC’s, NGO’s
--talk radio
--TV programming and movies with “hidden agendas”
--art and music-I have an excellent 1 hour lesson built around Henri Matisse’s “Music Lesson” that I would be happy to give to you or even present to your class for you.
--books-I had them read “Frankenstein”, “The Prince”, “1984”, “Brave New World” -in that order.
--etc

The theme I stuck with all year was ethics versus persuasive distractions (ad hominem arguments, ad populum arguments, and false dilemmas). My goal with each lesson was to enable the class to identify the target audience, the writer’s agenda, and then, by finding and discussing any distractions the author may have used, determine whether or not their delivery was ethical or merely a series of distractions designed to get the reader/viewer to ignore the issues by appealing to their emotions, rather than reason.

I don’t know if this is boring or helping, but there is more. If any of it sounds like something you might want to use or might want more info on let me know. I actually enjoyed teaching that class. I tried to treat it as a blend of CWP and Language, kind of a narrow slice of an Anthro/Linguistics class-Why do we talk to people the way we do? I hope this helps.