Lesson 11 - Lesson Plan

Home , Julie Bowen, Sofia Vergara, Ty Burrell

Lesson

Examining a Review of a Television Show

Aim: To prepare to write a review on a television show. NJSLS.W.6.2, NJSLS.W.6.4, NJSLS.W.6.5, NJSLS.W.6.6, NJSLS.W.6.7, NJSLS.W.6.8, NJSLS.W.6.9, NJSLS.W.6.10 Focus: “Today you are all going to be critics and your job will be to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to a television show that you have seen.” Assessment: The assessment rubric for this lesson is below.

On-Task Student Assessment Rubric Points Earned Student stays on task for the entire lesson. 5 Student uses confusion to ask questions for clarification. 5 Student listens to the PowerPoint and responds when asked. 10 Total Points Earned 20

Procedure:

• Teacher makes assessment rubric available to students. • Teacher distributes writing folders to students.

Whole Class Instruction • Teacher shows PowerPoint to class. • A copy of the television review used in the PowerPoint is on p. 2 as a teacher’s resource.

Group Work • Teacher reminds students about the brainstorming process. • Teacher instructs students to assemble in their groups and brainstorm ideas of television shows to review. • Teacher informs students that each student will make an individual choice. Their choice of which show to review is not a group decision but an individual one, although more than one student may choose the same television show to review. • Teacher may want to consider this lesson to review a video game as a substitute or supplement to this lesson.

Highlights Recap/Closure: Teacher asks for a few student volunteers to share their opinion on the Modern Family review. Did they agree with it? Disagree? Did the critic leave anything out?

Review of Modern Family

1 Modern Family delivers laughter during prime time. This series is dead and away the best new sitcom of the fall, partly because it does not follow any of the trite “formulas” established by other sitcoms.

2 Although it draws on other shows by employing their best actors like Ed O’Neill from Married with Children and Julie Bowen from Ed, it is unique in establishing each character as a complex, yet recognizable member of the television family. While each character plays out roles that reveal real and serious societal problems, they do it with continuous comedy.

3 On the surface, Ty Burrell as Phil and Julie Bowen as Claire, portray the typical suburban parents with three kids. Their dynamic, however, is fraught with laughter. Bowen plays a witty straight character as a foil to Burrell’s endless attempts at being a cool dude, all ending in a predictable disaster. His immaturity dominates his life and condemns all of his attempts at success to utter and humiliating failure, making him a modern day clown.

4 He is totally dominated by his wife and, at heart, is afraid of her, but tries to convince us, his audience, and himself, that he is his own man. He uses an old stage trick of the aside, talking directly to the audience, which makes him more realistic to us despite his quirky personality. Burrell is fast becoming a widely recognized comic actor even though he is a relative newcomer to fame.

5 O’Neill enjoys being the middle-aged husband of Sofia Vergara, arguably one of the most beautiful and desirable women on the screen. Despite his apparent good luck, O’Neill’s character does not really hit the jackpot by landing such a young, beautiful wife. He pays dearly for the privilege by having to put up with his wife’s mope of a son, which he does with good will and that allows us to like him.

6 Modern Family works because it does something new and fresh; it offers a mirror image of multiple segments of the population without relying on the stereotypes that America has come to expect. Notwithstanding their faults, its players provide high-voltage laughter through truly likeable characters, and they offer a realistic record of the millennial, as opposed to the traditional, family unit.