12 Essential English – Hero and Villain Pop Culture Unit – Intro to review genre

About the PPT: The PPT begins by explaining what film reviews are and their common features. Following this students watch the trailer for season one of Wednesday (the TV series on Netflix). This is followed by some questions to prompt discussion. Students then read a review and use a highlighter to note the various language features used by the reviewer. Afterwards students are introduced to the second film they will be viewing. They watch the trailer for The Incredibles and some quick facts are shown. They add the director details and others to the retrieval chart. There is a brief synopsis of the plot and some inspiration about what inspired the characters. Following this students are given a quote sheet which they can look at and complete an activity talking about what the characters words say about them (i.e. their personality, beliefs, values).

About the Word Documents:

1. A copy of a review written about the Wednesday TV series.

2. A handout which contains some key quotes from the characters from The Incredibles for an activity explained in the PPT slide.

Context: A lesson designed for use in a 12 Essential English classroom in Queensland, Australia as part of Unit 4: “Representations and popular culture texts.” During this unit students learned about Hero and Villain films and how filmmakers use cinematic techniques to portray them and create an intended message. Their assessment at the end of this unit was to write a 4-6 minute multimodal (speech) to be delivered live or pre-recorded reviewing one of the three films shown within the unit.