How effective were the teaching strategies?
I wanted to teach this topic from the bottom up, start with simple signs like a stop sign or a picture and show how they have meanings. Then move up to photos and how they have attached meanings. Finally students will make the connection and see that advertisements are constructed images with intended meanings. The students should be able to make the connection since the scaffolding was put in place. Teaching was done by the peers and facilitated by the teacher. Peers had an opportunity to teach each other and engage in discussion. I wanted this lesson to be full of examples of images and signs and the magazines that were produced for the student age group was relevant to their interests too.
Were the objectives achieved?
I believe the students walked away with critical literacy skills and a keen eye on interpreting signs. This was demonstrated in their presentation of the text. It will be further assessed as students construct their own advertisements and follow-up with an essay.
How appropriate was the content?
The content I provided to the students was very specific. I want it to be relevant to their popular culture and magazines and newspapers and mainly print advertising is something that they will be exposed to for the rest of their life. So I would therefore agree that the content was appropriate for this particular program.
What was done well?
Feedback from the students suggests the lesson went well in general. Discussions were interesting and peaked engagement. My interaction with the students was confident and vocal projection was clear. I allowed the students to provide the information and also backed up and expanded their answers. The instructions were also given out clearly as the lesson progressed.
What could have been done better?
Many things… Firstly, relying on technology is not always the best, there will be occasional annoyances. Perhaps I could have printed off the images for the students. I believe the worksheet was not detailed enough. In hindsight, the (uni) students were able to follow the worksheet fine, however, If I were to give this to a class I had on previous pracs, there will be raised hands. I also did not like the flow between the concepts of signs to photos to advertisements. While I did what I could to squeeze this into 20 minutes, I believe the introduction could have been dealt with a lot more in-depth to give students a solid foundation in understanding sign/signified/signified. Students also wondered what the lesson objectives were at first, and while I suppose the uni students keep an eye out for this as a part of the assessment criteria, the fact that they did see it clearly, means that real high-school students will not see the objectives upfront either. So I need to make the objectives explicit. “At the end of this lesson you will have done…”
I also need to watch my timing with
How effective were any follow-up activities?
I had planned for the follow-up to be an opportunity to create their advertisements and then lead into an essay. I would have loved to have seen this go through. So it is hard to engage the effectiveness in this case, but having done this lesson before, many students find this to be most fun part.
Any other comments on the lesson that you'd like to make?
Perhaps in future, rather than trying to squeeze a lesson into 20 minutes, I should focus on a lesson that is actually 20 minutes, and maybe look at only one objective for the 20 minutes. In the past, my lessons have never exceeded 3 objectives, so 20 minutes for one objective is realistic. I also realise that if I had a class of 20, then having 10 students present advertisements will become very time consuming. And analysis can not be done I groups larger than 3. Overall, I was please with how the lesson went, but in transfer to a real school environment, the lesson I would need to modify some aspects, like extending the time spend on specific concepts.
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