Jointly deconstructing interpretation responses supports students 'to identify the themes or key ideas of a text or artwork and respond to it values' (Derewianka & Jones, 2016 p. 266). As they do so, students draw on the elements of the text or media artwork to justify their interpretation. To jointly deconstruct an interpretation, teachers can use coding to identify the various elements used in Media Arts analyses.
The typical structure of an interpretation is:
- theme identification and a preview of element
- element evaluation
- theme reiteration (Derewianka & Jones, 2016, p. 266).
Many of the language features of persuasive writing are relevant to interpretation responses and critical to responding, for example, language choices which express feelings, make judgements of behaviours, or evaluates qualities. These attitudes can be amplified or softened through vocabulary choices which increase or decrease the intensity of a viewpoint.
To attend to these kinds of choices:
- The teacher explains that the purpose of an interpretation response in Media Arts is to identify the key theme or idea of the media artwork and provide comment on its values. They do this by selecting media elements or story principles to justify their interpretation of the intended effects on the audience or viewer (Derewianka & Jones, 2016, p. 266).
- The teacher presents a model text of a paragraph in an interpretation response to the class. This may need to be written by the teacher.
- The teacher reads the text aloud, pausing to clarify any unknown or ambiguous terms.
- The teacher asks students to highlight:
- the key theme or idea (e.g. blue)
- media elements and choices in another colour (e.g. green)
- amplified verb groups which express an attitude in the present tense (e.g. bolded)
- complex or expanded noun groups (e.g. underlined)
- intended consequences (or effects) in yet another colour (e.g. yellow).
- The teacher leads a discussion, encouraging students to explain:
- how the topic sentence is supported by elaborations
- how the media elements are used to realise intended values
- Students can later use the deconstructed paragraph as a model for their writing.
In the below example, a teacher-created the model text of the analysis of
the 2019 Australia Day Lamb advertisement. The text has been highlighted according to the colour-coding above.
The 2020 Australian Day Lamb ad
mocks our use of social media to encourage us to 'get real' about lamb. In the
opening shots of the ad, all of the people are holding mobiles. This
exaggerates
the idea that people
are obsessed with their devices.
The following shot of a girl taking a selfie in front of an advertisement enhances
the suggestion that people today cannot put down their devices and also alludes to
the unreality of social media.
Curriculum links for the above example: VCAMAR038, VCAMAR039, VCAMAR045, VCAMAR046.