Three Screens, One Story
One lunch-waste investigation, told three ways: a full print article, the script of a 90-second video, and an eleven-word infographic. Students audit what each medium keeps, cuts, and amplifies — then do RI.8.7's real work: match medium to purpose and defend the match.
Common Core standards covered
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Teacher-facing overview
Big idea: Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums — print, video, and multimedia — to present a particular topic or idea.
Student target: “I can audit how the same content changes across print, video, and infographic — what each keeps, cuts, and amplifies — and evaluate which medium serves which purpose, with the disadvantages priced.”
Success criteria: I can cite what a version keeps, cuts, and amplifies, across at least two mediums. · I can name each medium's native powers — and its native losses. · I can match a medium to a purpose and defend the match. · I can identify content that ONLY the full print version can carry, and say why that matters.
Essential question
The same true story can be an article, a video, or eleven words on a poster. If the facts don't change, what exactly are you choosing when you choose a medium?
Learning target: I can audit how the same content changes across print, video, and infographic — what each keeps, cuts, and amplifies — and evaluate which medium serves which purpose, with the disadvantages priced.
Success criteria
- I can cite what a version keeps, cuts, and amplifies, across at least two mediums.
- I can name each medium's native powers — and its native losses.
- I can match a medium to a purpose and defend the match.
- I can identify content that ONLY the full print version can carry, and say why that matters.
Why this matters
RI.8.7 is the standard for the media environment students actually inhabit: every story reaches them compressed, and the compression is a series of choices someone made. This lesson makes the choices visible by holding the content constant — one investigation, three mediums, with the video honest enough to list its own cuts. The evaluative skill — medium X serves purpose Y at cost Z — transfers directly to their own work: they will pitch, post, present, and print for the rest of their lives, and the keep/cut/amplify audit is how makers choose well.
Students should already be able to
- Reading a bar chart, informally.
- The trade frame — what a choice buys and costs (from earlier lessons).
- Citing by paragraph number.
Where this shows up outside the classroom
Assessment plan
Formative — for feedback during the lesson
- Warm-up — medium rankings flipping with content.
- Ledger circulation — keeps/cuts cited across versions before the court.
- Matching court — disadvantages priced in every defense.
Summative — the graded evidence: Exit ticket (amplify/cut + match + orchestration sentence) plus the completed ledger; the memo and adversarial audit rank as extension evidence.
The passage: “The Article — the full story”
An original news article written for this lesson (≈380 words) — the complete version of the story the other two mediums compress.
¶1 For three weeks in October, the Jefferson Middle School environmental club weighed the cafeteria's garbage. Every lunch period, four students in rubber gloves sorted trays at the tray-return window: food scraps in one bin, unopened items in another, true trash in a third. The scale they borrowed from the science lab told the rest of the story — and the story is heavier than anyone guessed.
¶2 The numbers, averaged over fifteen school days: 212 pounds of food discarded per day, of which 68 pounds — almost a third — was never touched at all. Unopened milk cartons were the biggest single item, averaging 84 cartons a day. Whole apples and unpeeled bananas came second. Multiply by 178 school days and the year's projection lands near 38,000 pounds of discarded food, roughly the weight of three school buses, from one building.
🔒 The full text — 4 numbered paragraphs, plus the photocopy-ready handout — ships in the kit. See plans →
The passage: “The Video and the Infographic — described”
The same reporting, compressed into a 90-second video and a hallway poster.
🔒 This companion text — 5 numbered paragraphs — ships in the kit. See plans →
The task students work on
The class audits all three versions with three verbs — KEEP, CUT, AMPLIFY — building the medium ledger: what each version does with the same reporting, and what its choices cost. Then the matching court: three purposes (convince the principal, stop a hallway, change the tray-return habit), each assigned its best medium with the disadvantage priced. Cite by version and ¶: (AR ¶3 / VD ¶4).
The medium ledger — same story, three treatments. Cite versions.
| Content | Article does… | Video does… | Poster does… |
|---|---|---|---|
| The 84 milk cartons | |||
| The bus-weight comparison | |||
| WHY students toss food (survey, tray rules) | |||
| The share-table proposal |
Anticipated student strategies
Verb auditing first because evaluation needs the inventory. Power naming second — it explains WHY the audit pattern looks the way it does. Purpose matching last, where the standard's 'evaluate' verb gets satisfied with trades, not preferences.
- Verb auditing. The student runs each content row across the three versions tagging keep / cut / amplify before judging anything.
The intended first pass — the ledger fills mechanically, and the cuts pattern (causes and legality die outside print) emerges on its own. Share first.
🔒 2 more anticipated strategies with select-and-sequence guidance are in the full lesson. See plans →
Lesson script
Collect the flips and mine them: texts are fast and low-pressure; calls carry tone; in person carries everything and costs the most. Students already run medium-audits daily — today we do it with journalism, where the same story exists three ways and every version made cuts.
Listen for: Yes — and saying why (tone lost, weight lost) is already medium evaluation. The skill is old; the vocabulary is today's.
All three versions are in the workbook and the handout. Board the first discovery together: trace ONE fact (the 84 cartons) across all three — reported with context (AR ¶2), monumentalized as a pyramid (VD ¶2), iconized in a grid (IG ¶5). Same fact, three physics. Then set the teams loose on the ledger. The pattern they should hit: the video and poster both cut the WHY paragraph and the legal details — emotion and instruction survive compression; causes and accountability don't.
- Three verbs: keep, cut, amplify.
- The article is the quarry — every other version mines it.
Listen for: Because the video knows what it's for — attention, not record. Naming your medium's limits is craft, not confession. (It's also this lesson's thesis, stated by the text.)
🔒 The remaining 4 steps — fully scripted with teacher-says lines, discourse questions, look-fors, and interventions — are in the full lesson. See plans →
Misconceptions and how to respond
- “The article is the best version — it has the most information.” Best FOR WHAT? It loses the hallway in four seconds and can't stand at the tray return. Completeness is a power, not a crown; the standard asks for advantages AND disadvantages, per purpose.
- “The video is manipulative because it drops the survey and rules.” — the teacher response is in the full lesson.
- “The poster barely counts as a text — it's eleven words.” — the teacher response is in the full lesson.
- “Pick the best medium and use it.” — the teacher response is in the full lesson.
🔒 Every misconception ships with a tested classroom response. See plans →
Scaffolded practice
The workbook follows gradual release rather than a page of blank prompts: 2 fully worked, 2 partially completed, then 4 independent.
- I doLiteral first — trace one fact. Follow the 84 milk cartons through all three versions: what does each medium DO with the same number?
🔒 7 more prompts across all three release tiers are in the full lesson. See plans →
Worked solutions and scaffolds for every prompt are in the downloadable kit, included with membership. See plans and pricing.
Exit ticket
- Name one thing the video AMPLIFIES and one thing it CUTS, with citations.
🔒 2 more exit-ticket questions are in the full lesson. See plans →
Worked answers, the completed answer tables, and the scoring rubric are in the downloadable kit, included with membership. See plans and pricing.
Printable handouts in the kit
All handouts are in Printable_Handouts.pdf inside the kit download.
Materials and classroom resources
Student experience
Students enter through a low-floor prompt, build or sketch a model, test a strategy, revise their thinking, collaborate, and present a final solution. The task remains accessible while allowing for sophisticated reasoning.
Detailed facilitation notes
- Step 1: Read the article — the complete version of the story. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
- Step 2: Read the video script and the infographic: mark what each KEEPS, CUTS, and AMPLIFIES. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
- Step 3: Audit the trades: what does each medium do best, and what does it silently lose? Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
- Step 4: Match medium to purpose: convince the principal, stop a hallway, change a habit. Ask: “What do you notice?”, “What could you try next?”, and “How can you prove that?”
Differentiation and inclusion
Support: The keep/cut/amplify verbs give every reader a concrete audit; extend with the missing-medium design task (the podcast or the assembly speech).
Language support: “I started by…”, “My model shows…”, and “I know my answer is reasonable because…”.
Extension: Require a second solution, alter a condition, or have students write a challenge for another group.
Accessibility: Manipulatives, enlarged visuals, oral response choices, partner reading, and reduced-copy student pages.
Assessment plan
Formative checks: Strategy choice, accuracy, representation, collaboration, and explanation.
End evidence: One medium-to-purpose match defended with a keep/cut citation from two versions.
Mastery: The student completes the task accurately and explains the strategy with limited prompting.