Connections+to+literature+and+literacy

This TV program connects to teaching narrative because of its formulaic structure. The songs drive the storyline of each episode. They help establish a cause/effect narrative. The characters sing songs that “[result] in an effect that becomes a cause that leads to another effect, and so on” (Pace 2010). The series’ comedy-drama aspect leaves many episodes with dangling causes that are to be resolved in future episodes. The musical pieces relate to the theme(s) each episode is attempting to convey. The songs not only relate to the episode at hand, but connect past and future episodes together, weaving them into a connected story arc. This series uses music to “focus on dialogue and character-driven plot lines” (Pace 2010).

With or without music, this program can connect to teaching narrative because each episode follows a pattern more or less. Almost every episode begins in equilibrium until something disrupts it, and then arrives at a conclusion (Todorov’s Model of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium). Any of the episodes can be taught using Freytag’s Triangle. There is always an exposition, climax, and resolution in every episode. Even Aristotle’s Formula can be applied to teaching the narrative of this series. There tends to be a setup, development, and denouement.

Our television project supports literacy learning because it requires students to adapt what they have learned in class about story arcs, dangling causes, recaps, and theme and apply that knowledge in social settings to make sense of their literary assignments. The activities require students to engage in literacy events in order to understand how to use information received about one medium and relate that information to a different form of media. Students analyze, evaluate, and create their own media texts within this project’s lessons. This project helps students think more carefully about how they read different media. It provides them with the tools and metalanguage with which to engage and make connections.

This project supports “[students’] need to develop an understanding of the ways in which the media deal with diversity” (Cortes). This show was chosen because it not only represents a mixture of social and cultural groups that can relate to audience members, but because of its range of songs, which can appeal to a variety of different people. A yearlong goal for Language Arts students is to become savvy readers of many different texts. Beyond this, students need the skills not only to be cognizant consumers but creators of new meanings and ideas. Media literacy is a vehicle for individuals within a society to move away from the passive receptor role and become educated designers of new media. The end goal is an educated, literate society.

This wiki project facilitates opportunities for students to build on what they know. Students are experts on the types of narratives at work in popular television series and are able to easily read and categorize a popular show, often creating complex classification systems. A show like Glee depends on the audience to be knowledgible of television conventions and plays with audience expectations (reading anticipation, pre-reading) for comedic value.

In the Language Arts classroom, students are expected to be able to identify major plots and subplots within a narrative. Lesson one extends student understanding of plot & theme beyond application to written texts and connects these narrative elements to the medium of television. Direct instruction of key vocabulary builds upon student understanding and provides a metalanguage for students to use when reading, discussing, and thinking critically about Glee. Through the free-write activity, students examine the music of the show and connect it to plot lines at work in the narrative, thus creating new complex, conceptual links across mediums and genres.

Lesson three provides a learning opportunity for students to examine the unique pace of television, adopt storytelling technique of the re-cap, and apply it to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar is an intimidating, difficult text for students to enter (JAGO). Examining, categorizing, the narrative of one act into a "re-cap" television format, students applying organizational frameworks to a new text and extending critical thinking, shifting towards transformed practice.

Students learn to recognize certain characteristics of narrative at work in television. Television is formulaic. Television narratives are intentionally created to be easily digested by a large segment of society. These familiar stories are repeated and reinforced, influencing expectations of what we will see when watching a certain program. Television moves quickly. Events unfold rapidly. When we watch, we accept that story events are not possible in real life, the suspension of disbelief. The accelerated plot is a convention of television. Lesson three provides a learning opportunity for students to examine the unique pace of television, adopt the storytelling technique of the re-cap, as used in Glee, and apply it to a text from a completely different medium.