The NY Times Sports Sunday Preview by Joe Ward on 2/7/16 for Super Bowl 50 was part rebus, part infographic and wholly adaptable for a model lesson on annotating text for students in middle or high school. The article charted the growth of the Super Bowl from different elements: tickets, football players, and attendance. Cultural icons from the entertainment industry associated with this sports cultural icon are included. Here is the model for a lesson to increase a student’s background knowledge on a topic (preferably chosen and not assigned).
Illustration by Sam Manchester; Photographs by: Bill Ray/The LIFE Premium Collection, via Getty Images (Dawson and ladle); Pro Football Hall of Fame, via Associated Press (footballs); Ed Andrieski/Associated Press (water bottle)
There is the cryptic title, Size I to Size L, that requires that students understand Roman Numerals.
There is the quarterback Len Dawson of the Kansas City Chiefs smoking a cigarette during half-time in the locker room, a picture that requires understanding what was acceptable before the the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, banned the advertising of cigarettes January 2, 1971.
There are the references that can drive student research into the Bell Rocket Air Men, the dog Lassie star of film and TV, and the changes in size of the American football (inflated or deflated arguments, notwithstanding).
The page dedicated to Super Bowl 50 is a model for students to take any informational text and “annotate” by adding pictures, just as the editors added the picture of the 1st Super Bowl ticket ($12.00).
There can be cross-disciplinary links by having students use calculations as charts, just as the editors calculated the price increases in ticket sales and in advertisements, and the increase in player weight.
Students could also embed links within the text (as I have done) to their research as part of the Common Core Writing Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.6
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.
Finally, teachers can teach a lesson or two on how to correctly cite evidence used in their research, or how to use a citation generator:
Ward, Joe. “Size I to Size L.” New York Times. 7 Feb. 2016. Web. 8 Feb. 2016.
Teachers can use the page as a model for other topics of inquiry.
Need suggestions? Here are some “starters” to try with students:
- The 1st Grammy Awards (1959) to the present;
- The evolution of the Olympics, from Ancient Greece to Rio De Janeiro in 2016;
- The history of the automobile;
- The ancient Wonders of the World compared to the Contemporary Wonders of the World;
- Deadly diseases, vaccines, and cures;
- Space Exploration Timelines USA vs International Agencies
Students could use different forms of software to create their informational text graphic; the Google suite of software (Docs, Drawing, etc.) is easy to use to create a PDF document. Students can experiment with different fonts to mimic the NYTimes fonts on the model front page. (FYI: NYTimes fonts changed changed to Georgia, as many people find easier to read wide print. They use Arial as the sans serif font.)
Finally, engaging students in authentic writing prompts like this one from the NYTimes is inquiry based learning that is student-directed and can be linked to John Dewey’s philosophy that education begins with the curiosity of the learner with many of these characteristics:
- Student voice and choice
- Strategic thinking
- Authentic investigations
- Student responsibility
- Student as knowledge creator
- Cross-disciplinary studies
- Multiple resources
- Multimodal learning
- Engaging in a discipline
- Real purpose and audience
- Authentic model
A model lesson, ripped (quite literally) from the front page!
Used Books in Class 