Speaking up: A Lesson to Engage Students' Voices

An Oral Communication through Media Literacy Lesson

Itinerant Resource Teacher Andrea Statton, recently co-planned an oral language and media literacy lesson with Primary HSP teacher Julie Found at William Burgess Elementary School.  Mrs. Found felt that some of her students were hesitant to orally express their thoughts and opinions, so a lesson was developed using an engaging photograph for students to critically analyze.

Mrs. Found used ‘Magic Ink’ in ActivInspire to slowly reveal the image for the students. Mrs. Found asked questions such as: “Who is in the image? What are they doing? Why do you think that? Where was this photograph taken? How do you know?” Mrs. Found annotated the students’ thoughts using the pen tool.

Students used the ActivSound microphone and the sound recorder in ActivInspire to share their analysis.

After the whole class lesson, students worked in groups to analyze their own photograph. To promote student accountability, each student chose a different colour marker to record their thoughts.