Second Week of Lessons

Kim and I presented during the second week of our Theme-Based Lessons.  Our lesson titled "What's in an Ad?" concentrated on appropriation and identity, and we focused on today's media in advertisements.  We began by showing the class a few images of advertisements and asked them to talk about what strategies the companies used to attract attention to their product.  Our presentation featured Andy Warhol and Ellen Gallagher and their use of appropriation of advertisements in the food and cosmetic industries.  Our scaffolding questions within our presentation were much better than our previous presentation, and the class seemed interested and engaged.  We then had our "students" look at magazine advertisements and pick one ad to alter in some way, by changing the meaning or content.  They could focus on the identity of the character portrayed in the ad or the product itself.  Though Kim and I only had two teacher examples, both using cosmetic ads, the class grasped the idea and each student had different ideas, creating a wide variety of products used.  Students used mixed media and collaged images or drew on top of existing ones to create new meanings.  We held a short critic of the work, and though we wanted it to be informal, we should have structured our questions better.  However, I believe Kim and I were very well-prepared and overall had a great lesson.  It is easy to work with Kim, we collaborate well and bounce our ideas off of each other until our final lesson is a product of what we both wanted.  I was skeptical about doing these Theme-based lessons in pairs, however I think it is beneficial to work with others and learn from each other, just as we learn from the rest of the class during the feedback of our lesson.