ALEX Learning Activity

Analyzing a commercial for a high-interest product, students will identify the elements and principles of design used to convey the message and ideal of a company through a digital collaborative space. Students will generate many, varied, and unusual ways to communicate their own message, matching the company's ideals, through a different use of elements and principles of design.

This is the third activity in a series of four to meet Media Arts Standard 5.1:

Using Productive Thinking in Media Arts
Identifying and Choosing a Message in Media Arts
Cracking the Code in Media Arts
Storyboarding in Media Arts

This activity was created as a result of the Arts COS Resource Development Summit.

Learning Targets:

I can identify the elements and principles of design at use in a commercial.

I can analyze how the elements and principles of design communicate a message in a commercial.

I can generate many, varied, and unusual ways to reimagine the use of the elements and principles of design to communicate my own message for a product that fits with the company's ideals. 

Students will view the Porsche commercial for a high-interest product.
Students will use their anchor place mats for the elements and principles of design to identify these elements and principles being used in the commercial on a padlet wall.(Padlet.com is an online bulletin board where students may log-in and post their ideas for the whole class to see. All students may answer at once, and the teacher can organize the ideas into groups.)

Students will participate in a teacher-led discussion in order for students to debrief and organize their collective observations on the padlet wall. Examples of probing questions:

• What catches your attention in this commercial? What is the camera doing that causes you to notice that part of the commercial?
• How do you feel at different parts of the commercial? What elements of the film affect your emotions?
• What kind of decisions did the director have to make about shooting this commercial? What decisions did the editors make?
• What elements of design do you see in the commercial? Are there ways to use other elements to communicate the same idea and feeling?

Students will work in partners to reimagine the use of the elements and principles of design to communicate their own message for the commercial, staying in line with the ideals of the company.
Each set of partners will join with another set. In groups of four, the students will share their ideas and refine based on the work of others.
Students will write a GIST of 25 words or less for their new plan for the commercial.

Formative Assessment: Teacher observation during student discussion and partner work and partner/partner team work on padlets.

Summative Assessment: GIST Check List

Students should have completed the following lessons:
Using Productive Thinking in Media Arts
Identifying and Choosing a Message in Media Arts

Student copies of Elements and Principles of Design place mats

Commercial of high-interest product saved in a format that can be shared with the class, i.e., mp4, online video etc.

Set up Padlet account at https://padlet.com/ and create the "wall" for this lesson.

Students may choose their own commercials, identify the elements and principles of design, and share with the class.

Students may deconstruct the commercial in a whole group with teacher's probing questions.

Students may use a checklist of the elements and principles of design instead of writing a GIST.

If students cannot work from a laptop or computer or a personal device to share responses on padlet, they can write and share their answers.

This activity is one part in a series to address Media Arts Standard CR.5.1:

Using Productive Thinking in Media Arts
Identifying and Choosing a Message in Media Arts
Cracking the Code in Media Arts
Storyboarding in Media Arts