Initiating Experiences

Strategies for Launching this Unit

Translating one’s thoughts and ideas into images is a form of transmediation that invites students to think critically, symbolically, and deeply about a given topic. Activating students’ background knowledge about gender expression and identity is a crucial component of introducing students to this text set. It is important for students to reflect on their current schema for gender so that topics such as socialization, gender binaries, and socially constructed norms surrounding gender identity and expression can be deconstructed and reconstructed through a critical lens. Personal and collaborative initiating experiences allow students to connect their individual experiences and cultural resources to the critical topics of gender identity and expression and provide a foundation or launching point for the class to engage more deeply in the content of this text set.

This “Sketch-to-Stretch” is an initiating exercise in transmediation that is designed to invite students to explore and critically analyze their socialization. This strategy for launching the unit connects to the Focusing Questions for the text set that relate to the sources of our perceptions (media, family, personal experiences, friends, etc.) about gender and how these perceptions influence our actions and interactions with others. Through this initiating experience, students will take an active role in deconstructing (and later on in the unit reconstructing) their schema of gender.

Sketch-to-Stretch in Response to Gender

• TRANSMEDIATION: Invite students to sketch for 5 minutes in response to the prompt, “What do you think about when you hear the word “GENDER”?
  • Encourage students to add as much to their sketch as possible
  • Invite students to only use symbols and visuals to represent their ideas

• CRITICAL DISCOURSE: Turn and talk to a partner for 3 minutes - students can use small sticky notes to make any additions to their sketches without altering the original composition. Invite students to turn and talk to a different partner for another 3 minutes, continuing to add to their original transmediation with sticky note sketches representing new ideas stirred through critical discourse with a partner.
  • Questions to consider:
    • Where did your ideas about “gender” come from?
    • What aspects of “gender” stand out strongest in your mind?
    • Were there any elements of “gender” that were harder for you to think through or sketch? Why might that have been the case?

• DECONSTRUCT “GENDER” as a class: Invite students to share out to the large group aspects of their sketch or additions to their sketch through discourse with peers about their associations with the word “gender”. As students share, the teacher (or a designated student creator or two) will compose an anchor chart or visual representation of the class’s schema for “GENDER” as uncovered through transmediations and subsequent conversations.
  • Questions to consider:
    • Where do our perceptions of “gender” come from?
    • What voices influence our ideas about “gender”?
    • What are “gender norms”?
    • Did conversation with your peers influence your perception of gender/original sketch? If so, in what ways?

EXTENSION: The anchor chart/visual representation of the class’s deconstruction of “GENDER” should serve as a reminder of the class’s initial schema of gender. Save this for later reference and comparison. Also, invite students to save their initial Sketch-to-Stretch transmediations. At the end of this unit, reconstruct gender with a repeat of this activity. Invite students to consider changes in their schema about gender and the role that diverse children’s literature and critical discourse in the classroom can play in possible shifts in schema.