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Unit goals:
In this unit we will explore the basic ingredient of Italian cooking: olive oil.
We will explore the particularities of olive oil production, retail and
consumption. We will
examine how olive oil is presented in literature, documentary, art and
cultural contexts.
This unit:
1.Prepares you to interpret language used in documentaries, poetry, and
advertisements.
2. Prepares you to pay attention to a wide range of genres and to provide
guidelines into thinking about reading, writing and speaking in appropriate
way.
3. Encourages you to take a critical stance to conventions of the discourse
about olive oil.
4. Helps you to develop ability to analyze, transform and interpret discourse
about oil production, retail and consumption.
5. Focuses on cognitive, linguistic and social dimensions of language use. In
particular focuses on the use of basic grammar structures, present and past
tenses, adjectives, and descriptions.
6. Contributes to the ability to use in appropriate contexts oil related specific
vocabulary and to develop cultural knowledge of Italian olive oil production
compared to American one.
Objectives:
By the end of this unit you will be able to:
1. Describe in written and oral how olive oil is produced and what are its
particularities.
2. Explain particularities of olive oil advertisements from the old days to today.
3. Narrate particularities of olive oil and how it is represented in paintings and
poetry.
4. Make connections between American and Italian olive oil production,
recognize
differences compare and critically think about them.

5. Notice and understand different cultural aspects found in the

advertisements
6. Develop affinity to distinguish a good oil from a bad one after tasting
different types

LESSON PLAN 1.
Title of Module: Ingredients of the Italian cuisine
Title of Lesson: Introduction to the course
Lesson Objectives
Introduction to the course, course expectations
Background knowledge activation
Sociocultural
Students will be able to reflect on their own and their peers knowledge of Italian cuisine.

Time / Steps / CC

Activity

0-25 minutes
Introduction to the
course

Speaking about the course expectations and course modules that

the students will be engaged in.

25-40 minutes
Schema activation
Situated practice

Schema activation: Mindmap

Students in groups draw a semantic map of what do they think are
the characteristics of the Italian cuisine.

40-65 minutes
Background
knowledge
activationSituated practice

Oral summary:
Group presentation using elmo overhead projector.
Groups present their mind map and explain why they picked certain
elements.

65-70 minutes
Adding a critical
framing
component

Whole class closing discussion.

Why did you pick a particular characteristic and what are your
experiences?

70-75 minutes
Situated practice

Predicting: students are told they will learn about olive oil. They
have to make predictions of how many olive oil types are in Italy and
where is olive oil produced in the United States.
This prediction continues in online engagement. Students are asked
to talk about their experience with olive oil, what type of olive oil
they use, (if they ever use it) and what can be find in the United
States.

LESSON PLAN 2.
Title of Module: Ingredients of the Italian cuisine
Title of Lesson: Olive oil production
Lesson Objectives:
Sociocultural
Students will be able to understand how olive oil is produced.
Linguistic
Students will be able to distinguish linguistic elements that are particular to a documentary.
Cognitive Students will be able to critically reflect on the processes that are involved in oil
production.

Time / Steps / CC

Activity

0-10 minutes
Pre-speaking
activity
Polling
Situated practice

Students go around the classroom with a survey that has yes or no

questions about the particularities of a documentary. Or using the
app PollEverywhere.com
Handout 1.

10-20 minutes
Instructional
conversations
situated practice/
critical framing

The instructor goes over the answers that the students provided for
the questions about the documentary. As a critical framing element,
instructor will include some particularities that are true to
documentaries that students may not grasp. The instructor will also
also ask questions such as Why do you think there is a nature
sound in the back in a documentary?

20-25
Instructional
conversations

Students will be engaged in a teacher led conversation about the

initial information of a documentary. (Title, director, company, and
some screenshots) See Handout 1. A.

Situated practice
25-35
Initial silent
viewing
Predictions
Caption strategy
Situated practice

In order to access background knowledge of the video and make

predictions.
Students receive a handout with images. Students silently view the
short documentary, in the meantime they write a caption for each
screenshot. See Handout 1. B.

35-40
situated practice/
critical framing

Students compare and discuss with pairs their captions.

40-45
second silent
viewing
Mapping cultural
visual
information/Overt
instruction

Students view the documentary (5 minutes long) and complete a

true/false questionnaire that is based on the images seen in the
documentary. See Handout 1. C.
They are also encouraged to make corrections of their captions.

45-50
Transformed
practice on
Mapping cultural
visual
information/Overt
instruction

Instructor goes over the answers with students and fills in the gaps
if there is a need.

50-60
Second silent
viewing Mapping
cultural visual
information

Students view the short documentary for the second time. They are
asked to look for elements that may indicate where the
documentary was made.

60-75
Transformed
Practice activity/
Overt instruction

Instructor engage students to summarize what happened during

class and what they have learned about olive oil.

http://www.brown.edu/academics/education-alliance/teachingdiverse-learners/sites/brown.edu.academics.educationalliance.teaching-diverse-learners/files/uploads/eScholarship
%20UC%20item%206q72k3k9.pdf

Closing elements: Instructor summarizes what happened during

class and what students learned about olive oil.

Homework
assignment
Students will react to the olive oil production in an online forum
discussion. They will also comment on these pictures and make

predictions on what is happening in them. Who the people are? The

period in time when these pictures were drawn/taken; what do each
focus on? etc. Included a modern photo of olive harvesting which
would like be less labor intensive, more mechanical, etc.

LESSON 3.
Title of Module: Ingredients of the Italian cuisine
Title of Lesson: Short documentary: Olive oil production

Lesson Objectives
Sociocultural
Students will be able to understand the cultural background of olive oil production and the
importance of the oil production process.
Linguistic
Students will be able to learn new vocabulary related to the olive oil production.
Cognitive
Students will be able to develop media literacy by.

Time / Steps / CC

Activity

00-10
Instructional
conversation/Situa
ted practice/
Critical framing

Going over homework assignment with students. First in small

groups then as a whole class where students engage in
conversation and lead the discussion.

10-15
Initial viewing with
sound
matching verbal
and visual signals/
Overt instruction

Students fill out the exercise D. see Handout 1. D.

They have to match the visual images with the words.

15-20
Transformed
practice

Students are asked to explain what they are

20-25
Camera shot
types, movement,
meanings
Critical framing
activity
Follow up overt
instruction/ critical
framing

Students will indicate rather or not a camera shot type, movement is

present in the documentary. See Handout 1. E.

25-35
Instructional
conversation

Instructor goes over the answers with the students and fills in the
gap about media literacy if its necessary.

I will ask students to make form/meaning connections. Particular

angle creates particular meaning.

35-55
Detailed viewing
with sound
Focusing on
relationship/ Overt
instruction

Engaging students in looking closely at lexical, grammatical features

of the documentary.
Students read the text and underline grammar features that are
used in the documentary, sentence structures, lexical expressions
such as adjectives that are used to describe olive trees, olives and
olive oil. See Handout 1. F.

55-65
Focusing on
relationship/ Overt
instruction
Critical framing

Students work in groups and discuss their findings they are asked to
share ideas and make form/ meaning connections.

65-75
Instructional
conversation
Focusing on
relationship

Instructor goes over the findings with students and summarizes

what students have discussed in this class.
Homework assignment: Online engagement
Students have to watch a 2 minutes long video that shows olive oil
production in the United States/ Georgia. They have to notice
differences between the short Italian documentary and this one.
(Such as how collecting is done, how are the olives, trees and
people.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2Zn5C4hl0U

LESSON 4.
Title of Module: Ingredients of the Italian cuisine
Title of Lesson: Short documentary: Olive oil production
Lesson Objectives
Sociocultural
Students will be able to critically think about the genre and its particularities.
Linguistic
Students will be able to use the basic syntactic construction to retell the story, by transforming
discourse to first person singular.
Cognitive
Students will be able to critically think about genre how language is used why it is used that
way. Interpretation throughout viewing of the documentary.

Time / Steps / CC Activity

00-10
Instructional

Students discuss their findings after watching the video as a

homework assignment.

conversation
Critical framing

In the end instructor asks them to summarize their findings.

10-30
Critical viewing
with sound/
Multiple
interpretation
activities
Critical focus
questions

In groups students discuss their understanding of the video and

videotext. They also answer true/false questions related to the
content. see Handout 1. G.

30-35
Instructional
conversation

Instructor goes over the possible interpretations with the whole

class.

35-65
Knowledge
application/
Story retelling

Students place themselves as a local olive oil picker that was seen
in the video and retell the story from his point of view. (There is a
handout asking for elements that you would like them to target).

65-75
Multiple
interpretation
activity

2-3 groups of volunteers can present their short story.

Homework
assignment
Transformed

Story retelling assignment: Students are asked to select an olive

picker and record the story from their perspective.

practice/
story retelling
Oral reflection I.
Reflection:
Each of the lessons (for the two weeks) planned are coinciding with the multiliteracies
framework. There is no better way to express multiliteracies than using Kress (2003) words, with
these lesson plans we are moving away from telling the world to showing the world. First of
all, I moved away from a primarily quantity (coverage) teaching approach to a less quantity one,
more in depth quality approach. By this I refer to the specifically selected materials for the two
weeks that are not many, however, they are key to the planned activities and activities build up
on the understanding of the specific genre, in this case the documentary. I used one video
commercial ad, several pictures and short text, which add a multimodal element to the course.
Since the four classes are focusing on a video, students are engaging in interpretation
throughout the viewing process. The video documentary that is used in this lesson offer an great
way for the learner to develop awareness to discursive practices in the target language society,
and to analyze how these practices are situated socially and culturally. In my design I used the
five stages activities suggested in Paesani, Allen and Dupuy (2015). In the first stage students
discussed and identified elements, in this initial stage students were focusing on details and
particularities related to a documentary. This is why in this stage the viewing is silent. In this
stage activities include situated practice and critical framing such as instructional conversations
and background knowledge activation.
In the second stage students still view the documentary in a silent mode. Here the planned
activities include mapping cultural, visual information and classifying by concepts that finally
include overt instruction elements. In the third stage students view the documentary with audio
for the first time. Here the focus is mostly on matching elements and getting familiar with the
new vocabulary. This is the overt instruction stage. In this stage students will also take a close
look at the particularities of the genre (documentary).
Following, in the fourth stage students are watching the documentary in a detail, where they
focus on relationships and identify differences. In the fifth stage students are viewing the short
documentary and creating multiple interpretation. This stage includes critical framing.
Finally, in the sixth stage students are engaged in knowledge application where they are
exposed to transformed practice activities and in my lesson plan specifically they will engage in
story retelling.

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In summary, the lesson plans include the principles of multiliteracies and students are engaged
in learning processes that are crucial in using the multiliteracies framework. Students within the
use these lesson plans are moving beyond the surface-level comprehension to a deeper
understanding of the genre. Students are interpreting text in a different, much deeper way than
they have done in the CLT approach.
Students are also engaged in collaboration with the video text, the producer of the video text
and as the viewer of the video text, they are engaged in a collective social collaboration. Finally,
students are engaged in problem solving and reflection. In this critical framing part of the lesson
students are working closely with the genre, examine linguistic elements, make changes to it
and reflect on these changes. This activity helps students see the connections between
linguistic and other elements and meaning. In these units, self-reflection is encouraged as well,
in this part students can reflect on how the cognitive and linguistic elements of a specific genre
can have an effect on their personal use and understanding of the genre. Furthermore, the
pedagogical acts of situated practice, critical framing, overt instruction and transformed practice
are the key support foundations of the planned activities in this course.

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