Lesson+Deux

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__Objectifs:__ **LA.1112.2.1.4: The student will analyze the way in which the theme or meaning of a selection represents a view or comment on life, providing textual evidence for the identified theme**
 * __Lesson 2__ **
 * LA.1112.1.7.2: The student will analyze the authors purpose and/or perspective in a variety of text and understand how they affect meaning**


 * After this lesson:**
 * Students will be able to identify how media represents stereotypes.**
 * Students will be able to explain reasons for representations of stereotypes in the media.**
 * Students will be able to discern effects of representations of stereotypes in media.**


 * __Brief Description__ **

**In this lesson, the show** //**Glee**// **will be used to teach students to spot how media represent stereotypes, to begin to be able to explain why these stereotypes would be used, and to begin to be able to discern how these stereotypical representations influence the audience. It is an early, introductory lesson in a section of a unit on stereotypes in the media. To begin the lesson, the teacher will call for five volunteers to do an improv skit. When the volunteers come up, they will each be given a printout of a different face, and the face is to be the character they will act out. Faces will be intentionally chosen by the teacher so that they lend themselves to stereotyping (a white woman, a white boy, a black man, an oriental man, and a Latino woman, for instance) without giving away too much about a character. The idea is that the students will fill in the gaps for each character. As a class, we will then decide upon names for each character (chances are good that the names will be stereotypical, but if not, the deliberate dodging of a stereotype can make for a teachable moment addressed later in the lesson, too). Then, after the fashion of "Whose Line is it Anyway?" we will take suggestions for a possible situation the volunteers will improvise in a scene or two. The actors will then play out their situation for a couple minutes until the teacher has seen enough. What is expected to happen is that the students will use their previous notions of stereotypes to inform their improvised renderings of characters.**


 * After all the above goes perfectly as planned, the teacher will settle the class back down for a discussion on what just took place. The discussion will kick off with the question, "How did you (the class) decide on names for the characters?" followed by, "Why did you (the actors) decide to play the characters the way you did?" The students will begin to be aware of their dependence on stereotypes in portraying and understanding characters, and of their reasons for representing characters in certain ways. They will effectively be brainstorming possible directors' motives (purpose and audience as related to television media) in the casting of characters and the representations of stereotypes.**


 * The teacher will then give overt instruction on the presence of stereotypes in the media and TV specifically, giving a working definition of stereotypes, helping students see that we all rely on stereotypes to some extent in making sense of other people, highlighting some of the ways and reasons directors use stereotypes (as the class did in the improv activity), and explaining that being able to think critically about stereotypes in the media is a part of media literacy. After this brief lecture/discussion, the teacher will play part of an episode of** //**Glee**// **in which stereotyping is a prominent theme (possibly it will have been noted as a theme in Lesson 1), such as the episode "Funk." Before watching, each student will be assigned a character in the episode to watch closely. As the students watch, they will take notes on their respective characters in answer to the following questions: Can you classify this character into a people group? What group? What makes you classify the character this way? What about this character meets or defies your expectations for him/her? How does this character affect the way you think about a certain stereotype? After the screening, the students will get into groups with others who shared their character, and they will discuss the answers to the questions. Class will finish with the groups explaining to the rest of the class their answers about their characters. The teacher will assess the students by collecting their individual papers on which they answered the questions as they watched, by speed teaching as the groups discuss, and by having the groups present their collective answers to the rest of the class.**