Prior Knowledge
STUDENTS WILL HAVE READ THE BOOK RENDITION OF “THE THREE LITTLE PIGS” IN THE EARLIER LESSONS. SINCE THEY ARE FAMILIAR WITH THE STORY AND ITS DEVELOPMENT, THEY ARE ABLE TO SHARE COMMON EXPERIENCES WITH PEERS AND PARTICIPATE MORE ACTIVELY IN CLASS ACTIVITIES.
Lesson Objectives
By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:
Understand the use of visual and audio semiotic modes in a video
Compare the differences between the book and the video rendition of “The Three Little Pigs” by analyzing the audio and visual semiotics
Comment on how the author uses visual and audio semiotics to capture interest and improve retelling of the story
Lesson 1 (60 mins)
AN INTRODUCTION TO SEMIOTIC MODES
Comparing the book and the video (20 mins)
In the previous lesson, students have completed a shared reading of “The Three Little Pigs” in class. They have also familiarized themselves with the story by performing Readers’ Theatre. After attaining a better understanding of the story, the teacher proceeded to decode the more challenging words and study how the writer uses language to improve the story narration.
In this lesson, students are informed that they will be watching the following video, which is an exact reenactment of the story “The Three Little Pigs” that they have covered in the previous lesson. Before playing the video, the teacher will task the students to gather responses to the following questions:
What is different between the text and video form of “The Three Little Pigs”? (Respond using a single wor
Did you like the text or the video form of “The Three Little Pigs” better? Why do you say so?
It is important for the teacher to design learning experiences to allow students to develop strategies for viewing the new and unfamiliar, in whatever form they may manifest themselves.
Explicit Teaching (30 mins)
The teacher will gather responses to the first question by inviting students to submit their responses onto mentimeter. The teacher then draws students’ attention closer to the bigger ideas highlighted in the center of the chart. Afterwards, the teacher will explicitly highlight the key similarities or differences between the two different portrayals of the story and how their presence improves their story.
Through the use of PowerPoint slides, the teacher will explain the audio and visual semiotic modes by drawing references to specific scenes in the video. To cater specifically to the demands placed on Primary three students, only several components of each semiotic mode will be discussed. The components students will analyze are listed as follows:
QUESTIONS TO ELICIT STUDENT RESPONSES
How different is it watching the video and reading the book?
How many of you prefer watching the video to reading a book? Why?
What is the first thing that catches your eye when you view the poster? Why?
What are the colours or lightings used in the video? What emotions do you they evoke in you?
What type of music did you hear? Is it fast, slow, cheery, suspenseful, fun or whimsical? How did it make you feel?
Do you think music is important in videos? Why?
The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf
Visual Semiotics
Audio Semiotics
Today’s society places increasing demands on students to acquire new instructional strategies, vocabulary and knowledge to support comprehension processes of a wider range of linguistic representations/interpreting multimodal resources (Serafini, 2011). To accomplish multimodal literacy, students ought to have strong contextual and textual knowledge, accompanied by critical dimension and aesthetic dimension (Van Leeuwen, 2017). By teaching students these techniques for decoding texts with refence to various semiotic modes, students gain the ability to simultaneously process written text, visual images and elements of design to construct meaning (Anstey & Bull, 2006; Lankshear & Knobel, 2006).
It is important for the teacher to recognize the equivalence in meanings and functions between language and visual communication. While language is constantly emphasized in the English classroom, visual communication is often neglected due to curricula considerations. Semiotic awareness must be established to enable students to communicate about critical thinking (Serafini, 2011). Thus, visual and audio semiotics are studied for their potential as resources for representation and interaction, offering choices for how to represent people, places, things and events (Van Leeuwen, 2017).
Explicit teaching of metalanguage and drawing relations between semiotic modes are crucial, since each semiotic mode has its own grammar (set of socioculturally specific rules and conventions governing the functions, use and combination of individual elements) (Serafini, 2011). While some modes are intrinsically related to others, meaning expressed cannot be exactly transferable between different modes. Each mode adds value to work and carries different demands on students (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009).
Kahoot Quiz (10 mins)
To reinforce learning, students will be tasked to participate in a Kahoot quiz. The quiz activity will include questions about specific aspects of each semiotic mode. Some questions are listed as follows:
The quiz can also function as a form of formative assessment, allowing teachers to monitor students’ learning and the accuracy of their knowledge. Students can also clear misconceptions and observe for themselves how much they have learnt over the lesson. The teacher ought to go through each of the questions, with special emphasis placed on questions that are wrongly answered by majority of the students.
