Extended Analysis: Media analysis worksheet
Context
This entry describes a situation in which my observations and students’ verbal feedback revealed weaknesses in a graphic organizer I had designed for a new unit, and the iterative process that resulted from responding to the dilemma with a revised graphic organizer. Analysis of whether or not the revised graphic organizer resolved students’ confusion about how to do the assigned work is ongoing.
This week I taught the majority of a small unit on basic media analysis skills that I designed last semester in my English Methods course for my 9th grade World History course in the “Focus on Success” program at NCHS. The unit introduces skills to analyze news photographs, various genres of videos, newspaper front pages, infographics, and public art murals—all using the same media analysis framework put forth by the Library of Congress. Students encounter a piece of media, “Observe” what they see, “Reflect” on those observations, and develop “Questions that emerge from Observing and Reflecting. This reflection solely focuses on a sequence of lessons in which students analyzed news photographs. Because this unit analyzes media taken out of narrative or historical context, the final step—Question—is powerful for allowing students to connect what they know to what they would need to know in order to more deeply analyze what the piece of media might “mean.”
This week I taught the majority of a small unit on basic media analysis skills that I designed last semester in my English Methods course for my 9th grade World History course in the “Focus on Success” program at NCHS. The unit introduces skills to analyze news photographs, various genres of videos, newspaper front pages, infographics, and public art murals—all using the same media analysis framework put forth by the Library of Congress. Students encounter a piece of media, “Observe” what they see, “Reflect” on those observations, and develop “Questions that emerge from Observing and Reflecting. This reflection solely focuses on a sequence of lessons in which students analyzed news photographs. Because this unit analyzes media taken out of narrative or historical context, the final step—Question—is powerful for allowing students to connect what they know to what they would need to know in order to more deeply analyze what the piece of media might “mean.”
AnalysisBefore the unit began, my CM, Chris Sutter*, and I discussed the complexity of the Media Analysis Worksheet I had designed for students to collect and organize their notes on the various media we are analyzing. We acknowledged that my graphic organizer was wordy, and that it might be confusing for students to figure out exactly what sort of information it was asking for. It included both direct instructions and guiding questions, but did not distinguish between the two in way that was foolproof. I wasn’t sure what sort of prompts my students would need to get interested in the text, but decided not to change the graphic organizer at first.
By the second day, students expressed confusion about whether or not they “had” to answer the guiding questions, and I was having trouble slowing down the protocol so they would engage each step of the process. While I attempted to keep students’ attention on the “Observe” step, many immediately jumped ahead to make inferences and evaluations in the “Reflect” and “Question” steps. I realized that I may have put too much in front of them at once, and needed to scale back some aspect of the process. I used the original worksheet for two days before my PM arrived for an observation on the third day, and noticed the learning and behavioral issues that were emerging among students, perhaps in response to confusion around the graphic organizer. In conversation with my PM, we discussed how students had behaved and engaged (or not) with the assignment during class, and agreed that the format was confusing. I explained in more detail the process through which I wanted my students to proceed, and explained that I felt like I was having trouble “slowing down” the steps. She recommended that I try a few things—add arrows to the organizer to show the flow from one step to the next; add prompts for each step in the first person. I agreed and added that I would eliminate all of the “guiding” questions written on the original sheet, and just keep those questions as guides for myself in helping students out loud. I created a new graphic organizer for the next day (day four), and handed it out to students without much explanation: “this is better,” I said, and I might have told them that the changes were a result of their questions, but I did not have the attention of the whole class when I introduced it. I just put it in their hands, told them to add it to their collection of Media Analysis Notes in their 3-ring folders, and started the activity. By this day, students were gaining some confidence in the steps of the protocol, and were increasingly showing excitement about getting to look at more photos. (Some were even frustrated that we were not returning to images we had seen on previous days, and in their eyes, “had not finished.” Students started to collect their observations immediately when I showed the photo, and there was less calling-out about what was going on in the photo during the “Observe” step. When students started moving ahead to “Reflect,” I told them to go back to the prompt for the first column: “In this photo I see…” and continue finishing that sentence with their list. When we got to reflect, some students offered insights that had not shown up in our full-class list of observations, so I asked them to explain what observable evidence/detail their reflection explained. (I realize that I could have modeled this with the original media analysis worksheet, but with the new draft I only had to point to the arrow between the two columns to show students that “Reflect” is in response to “Observe.” As we moved on to Question, I allowed students more leniency in connecting their questions to the previous column, which was fine with me. But again, I encouraged students to start with the first-person prompt. This scenario reflects various mindsets of “self as learner and teacher,” “students as teachers and learners,” and “curriculum and pedagogy” as fluid processes, not fixed frameworks. |
Connection to inquiryThe process of revising the Media Analysis Worksheet directly contributed to a revision in my inquiry question. I had been intending to narrow my question but had not yet realized how. With my PM’s suggestion to focus on “first person prompts,” I realized that my question would benefit from the inclusion of the same parameter. A recent reading from my SS methods course supported the change: Stephen Wolk’s “Teaching for Critical Literacy in Social Studies” insists that the purpose of critical literacy is “to empower [students] with multiple perspectives and questioning habits.” This phrase, “questioning habits” is at the root of the media analysis unit and is part of the thrust of my inquiry question (which focuses on this class, but not my others.)
While it was previously much broader, my question now reads: What happens to students' concepts of individual agency when they use first-person reasoning in historical analysis? Wolk’s article calls for the “questioning habits” on which the “individual agency” and “first-person reasoning” in my question relies. For a student to question a text, I think they need to be able to identify themselves in the act of questioning: “I know this, therefore this does not make sense;” “I don’t understand this, therefore I need to know more about that.” In the unit I taught this week (more on it in Reflection 2,) students analyzed news photographs using a 3-part process: Observe, Reflect, Question. My 2nd draft of a graphic organizer students used for this process introduced first-person prompts that I hadn’t used in the 1st draft. It read, “In the image I see…”, “Based on my observations, the image might be about …”, “After observing and reflecting, I still have questions about …”. With the introduction of these first-person prompts, I believe students were able to start asking questions from their own perspective, rather than wondering what sort of questions were “important” to ask. In this exercise in particular, the purpose of asking questions is to acknowledge that further research/additional knowledge is necessary to fully understand what is happening in the image. The questioning allows students to connect the static image to a world of contextual information. With Wolk’s help, I will be somewhat better equipped to create more lessons that require questioning (even without answering,) and look for evidence around my students’ “questioning habits.” I should have come to this realization during our many dozens of pages of reading about inquiry, but somehow it only happened just now. In the future, I think I will require that students use the first-person prompts to write complete sentences about what they Observe, Reflect, and Question, so I can have concrete evidence of their use of the first person, and so they might internalize, however implicitly, the relevance of their individual perspective in the analysis. |
Original |
Revised |