Lorenza's Lesson Reflection

1. What did you see as the aim(s) of the lesson?
I felt this lesson was all about developing media terminology and enhancing the students' capabilities and confidence in Textual Analysis.

2. What did you plan to do?
I wanted to ensure I could get the group working together to build on their individual knowledge. I planned to watch two videos, the main one being a contemporary piece that they'd be familiar with and have some group work & discussions to do that.

I wanted to start off by getting the groups familiar with key media terms and so planned a spidergram task based on camerawork, mise-en-scene, sound and editing. I chose groups with a mixed range of abilities based on the top media trumps, therefore there was always a key "media terminology" based person in each group to help shape the task more.

I planned to use the Placemat learning task during the textual analysis as I felt this helped each member in the group have individual input in the task, then generated ideas as a collaboration and finally presented their ideas as a class. The three parts of this task were there to really hone the learning, key words and points for each student.

3. What went well?
The groups made a strong analysis of Downton Abbey, despite many not knowing the programme, they picked up on key areas and used correct terminology and media language.

Most groups worked well to ensure everyone had a voice and shared their views on the piece.

4. What didn't go so well and how would you do it differently?
Personally I feel I need to strengthen my knowledge even more in this area as there were a few areas I feel I could have been more confident on.

Also, I feel I would set up the placemat task in a more simplistic way (perhaps triangles rather than squares for groups of three) as there was a tiny bit of confusion at the start of the task.

Another way I could perhaps develop my lesson would be to spend more time making the spidergrams. Or perhaps, giving them some words and their job is to look up/decipher each one. Therefore developing their media vocabulary even more.

5. What do you think people learned from the session?

There was lots of learning and re-learning in this session. I feel people now have a stronger idea what to look and listen out for during a film or to programme to conduct a strong media textual analysis. I also feel that sound was explored more as many learnt more about diagetic and non-diagetic, but also specifically dialects, language and music which could convey different messages to the audience.