Step 3: Memoir & Analyzing Media
Unit 2 | Week 4 | ePortfolio Digital Track
Goals: Students will think about genre, medium, and media in a sample work, begin rhetorical analysis, begin examining memoir sub-genres.
Just like we did on a smaller scale in the About Me, in this unit students will be analyzing some digital genre-samples: this time, with memoir. Later, in Step 4, students will be deploying some small media elements of their own, so for now this Step will familiarize them with these genres and tools.
Preparing for Step 3:
❏ Locate modal memoir samples within your chosen sub-genre of memoir (or use Leo and Maria’s defaults!). This might be this American Life, Millennial, or whatever you're interested in! Some profile-focused podcasts, such as the Daily or Fresh Air, also have memoir components.
❏ Walk students through analyzing these examples together in class.
❏ Encourage students to bring in their own samples of the sub-genre.
Examples of Step 3 in action:
Leo (Audio Track): Leo selects a few samples of memoir for students to look at, and makes sure to include one podcast he likes that has a memoir-like episode ft. Phil Collins. When the class discusses the podcast, Leo asks them to think about how this functions differently because of its audio component. Students talk a bit about the music and voices, and they make some good headway. Leo also plays a few humorous clips from This American Life.
Maria (Video Track): So it turns out Maria’s students are really into TikTok. A student wants to show Maria a TikTok before class starts. This makes Maria nervous. They haven’t really brought up politics or anything controversial in class and they’re not sure if the video might make other students uncomfortable. Maria tells the student to wait around after class and they’ll take a look at the video because they don’t have time (class is starting soon!).
When class ends, the student waits until most of the other students have left. Maria thanks the student for waiting and asks what it’s about because if it’s related to class and memoir, they might be interested in sharing it (Maria is also uncomfortable watching something that isn’t class related, so they uses class appropriateness as a barrier for that).
The video turns out to be a humorous “about me” introduction from a famous TikTokker. Maria is impressed with the student but was glad she kept her guard up. They writes down the name of the video and the user who posts it and considers showing it during the next class.
Maria’s class responded well to sharing TikToks the other week (a pattern started with that first student), and Maria wants to keep this up, but isn’t exactly sure how. Maria selects an example memoir video from “Great Big Story.” They decide to open the class by talking about humor and audience, then shows the video. Maria makes sure to curate a list of other videos that they feel comfortable showing, since they do not want to blindly go down a Youtube rabbit hole and watching videos like this video (in which Will Smith reigniting the debate of whether a hot dog is a sandwich), this (a dog jumping into a passenger window) or this (a small monkey receiving a bath).
Maria then invites students to go home and bring back some of their own examples, but they lay out some clear guidelines for content warnings and how to clearly label content. When students return later that week, Maria has them share their examples in groups, and then some of the ‘best’ examples with the larger class.
Tips and Tools:
Don’t hesitate to ask your students to find examples! They may surprise you, but also remember that with memoir, it’s important to talk about how to bring difficult topics into the classroom. We would recommend screening these examples before you show them in the classroom because while one video might not make one student uncomfortable, another might. Have some backup examples in case things get too heavy, find some more positive examples to lighten the mood, if needed.
Don’t forget about the sample lessons available in each of the toolkit! These are yours to use/adapt/remix into your own classroom to get your students experimenting with media.
Back to Step 2.
Next to Step 4.