Throughout my practicums and observations, I’ve seen the benefits of interactive learning tasks, many involving the use of IWBs. In pairs this week, we created an interactive activity based on the text The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan involving multiple forms of literacy. We decided to focus on the interaction between images and sounds and how they can work in isolation and together to evoke emotional responses.
Lesson Aim: To consider how various sounds can evoke emotional response in conjunction with images.
Resources: IWB, Shaun Tan screenshots of images, sounds/music.
- Having read the book, show an image from the text and, as a class, discuss what emotions are evoked by the image (Think-Pair-Share).
- Have students share with the class what they have discussed with their partner — did you agree or disagree? Why?
- Next, ask them to discuss with the same partner what sounds or music they think would match or be suitable for the image. Share with the class.
- Show class image with sound files underneath. Ask the class what sounds would be appropriate for this scene as background noise or music. Ask them to justify their inclusion or exclusion.
- Then split students into four groups and allocate them another image from the text.
- Have students repeat the above process: discuss how the images make them feel, what sounds they feel would be appropriate and selecting sounds that suit the image.
- Gather the class and using the IWB, have each group come up and select which sounds they chose and justify to the class why they chose them based on the emotions the students in the group felt.
- In a future lesson, to continue with this current lesson, show them the film and discuss whether their ideas were similar to the film makers.
