Media Text Set Ideas?

What's a media text set?
and
How do I build a media text set?

Real World reply: You create a media text set whenever you compile a set of materials from different media that inform about a particular topic. For example, you might assemble a set of materials that includes the principal print novel, Charlotte's Web, and one or more topic-related materials from other media such as:

• a comic book about Spiderman

• a collection of tales or trading cards about Anansi

• a DVD about air-breathing arthropods and/or Charlotte's Web

• a few non-fiction books about spiders from the library

• the lyrics of a few songs about spiders

• a tale from mythology or other cultural viewpoint...

• brochures, posters, game with rules...

building topic information from Real World content that can be examined usefully within an instructional setting for instructional objectives. Begin with a small set.

Media text sets gain further learning investment when students contribute suggestions and text samples for inclusion.

Each set of materials is available to each student, either individually or within a small group. The study requires several different types of reading, analytic skills, and data collection.

The mix of the set is not only explored from various literacies, it can also serve as an example set of possible student response vehicles. These would include fact/data collection and chart making, creative writing of many kinds, comparisons between media, storyboarding, comic stripping, song writing, board-game development, etc.

Media text sets are not only based in Real World content, they typically reflect popular culture. Used in the classroom, these immediately grab students' interest because they are recognizable from their Real World. The teacher uses the set to deepen and broaden students' everyday literacies and to establish connections about how and where to find information in useful bridges and intersections between Real and School World.