Rant with Meme
You will deliver a 2-3 minute rant, which includes a meme to go along with your point. Your topic will be based on an aspect of life that you will choose from the list below. Your job is to find a lesson to be learned for how we should live today. You are to use examples or information from your novel and your research of the time as either allusions or illustrations for your point. What should we value? Are we better off today or not?
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START by reading the assigned task: assignment checklist & rubric
Step 1: Look at the meme examples at the bottom of this page to get an idea of the visual part of the project and the social messages they impart. Step 2: Review the list of topic areas below and think about all your research and your novel. What are some things that stand out as different, better, or worse today than then? What are some issues today you're peeved about or that you value now and how do these compare to your novel and time period? Whether you brainstorm from then to now, or from now to then, the idea is that you find a lesson we have learned or we need to learn that could be the subject of your rant. READ this article about life lessons from the Renaissance just to give you an idea of types of lessons. You have to give me your topic and lesson before you start as a checkpoint; there is a cap on certain topics (ex. co-vid) - so be original from the start. LIST OF TOPIC AREAS TO CHOOSE FROM: |
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Step 3: CHECKPOINT #1 - Send me in the chat the answer to these 3 questions, so I can approve your idea:
- What's your topic?
- What's your message to everyone about this? What's the lesson / your stance on this?
- What historical information from your 50 years research on your book can you use to compare / contrast or illustrate this idea?
Step 4: Create the meme. You can use a free online meme generator (Google free online meme generator), Power Point, Canva, Word... any tool that works for you. In the end you will save it as an image (pdf, png, mp3 etc). I recommend looking up existing memes on your topic - see how other people did it, and look at all the different meme formats there are. You have a lot of options. Remember: Your meme MUST reflect your message and you must combine words and images, and the past and the present in one of these two ways:
Checkpoint # 2 - Send me this meme draft in a chat for feedback.
- an image from your era with text from today; or,
- text from or of then and a current image.
Checkpoint # 2 - Send me this meme draft in a chat for feedback.
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Step 5: Watch a few of these rants from Rick Mercer to get an idea of the oral presentation component: on getting the flu shot, on using turn signals, driving in the dark, and the war on fun. Here they are in text version to see word limit. Notice his play on words at the end. That's a mandatory element. Your presentation is 2-3 minutes (min to max), so these Mercer examples are all about that length - between 300-400 words. Here is a reverse outline of the components of his flu shot rant. The class power point.
Step 6: Draft the rant - thinking about how you would integrate / refer to your meme during the oral. It will appear onscreen at some point as you talk. Your presentation IS NOT an explanation of the meme. If your meme needs explaining, you've done something wrong. It should punctuate your rant. Review the examples again under Step 2. Ensure that you allude to your novel or author and/or some event from your time period. CHECKPOINT #3 - submit the draft rant, NON MLA formatted, with your name and 4 distinct paragraphs in the Teams assignment folder for feedback. |
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Step 7: Revise the rant based on teacher feedback and with spoken and rhetorical conventions including closing using some word play.
Step 8: Peer review / checkpoint #4 on the full, revised content and planned spoken conventions and rhetorical strategies. This will likely be out loud in pairs. I will be listening in during class for feedback. So you are also basically rehearsing and annotating your draft for where you will punctuate / emphasize certain points or pause or add a silence on purpose and so on.
Step 9: Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse. Now you have your final version, it's about practising - Remember you will have absolutely NO NOTES. So DO NOT memorize, just know it so well you can ad lib where necessary. Especially lock in your opening and closing. Follow the moon phases Power Point here as a visualization tool to help you focus in and remember your key points.
Step 10: Stand and deliver ( / PREACH). Final checkpoint #5 - it's DUE.
Step 8: Peer review / checkpoint #4 on the full, revised content and planned spoken conventions and rhetorical strategies. This will likely be out loud in pairs. I will be listening in during class for feedback. So you are also basically rehearsing and annotating your draft for where you will punctuate / emphasize certain points or pause or add a silence on purpose and so on.
Step 9: Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse. Now you have your final version, it's about practising - Remember you will have absolutely NO NOTES. So DO NOT memorize, just know it so well you can ad lib where necessary. Especially lock in your opening and closing. Follow the moon phases Power Point here as a visualization tool to help you focus in and remember your key points.
Step 10: Stand and deliver ( / PREACH). Final checkpoint #5 - it's DUE.
Here are some examples of the type of memes we're doing (ie intellectual memes):
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Here are some examples more closely related to this project, with explanations:
"Sweet Caroline" came out in 1969 - while this meme is used to amplify health measures during covid- it could also be an inspiration for say a meme about sexual harassment in the workplace for example. So the lyrics are from Post-Modern period, and the context of the meme would be from 2020. The picture should also be 2020 - ie virus-related to really meet the requirements for this project, but I just found this online.
Science, possibly gender issues |
Jonas Salk discovered the vaccine for polio administered as of 1955 (again Post-Modern time period). This type of meme has potential for the left corona virus... or still with climate change. But again the idea being a contrast between now and then. Science, Tech, climate - topic areas |
Medieval information on chivalry crossed with modern gender norms and current image. Ideally there would be a pic of say a joust or a man setting his cape on a puddle...
Relationships / gender as topic areas |
Here is a student example and Sauvé examples of this exact project:
From Leah Summers 2020. Of course just before the lockdown, numbers were early. From medicine / health / science topic area. Text from now, image from then.
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So this is a play on Rene Descartes' famous expression, with a veiled reference to Trump, but social media in general and the idea of watching and being watched. As well, I've altered a Bible quote.
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A more literal compare/contrast version of the same type of idea. A picture of Rene Descartes and Trump side by each, with the idea being that today people a. don't think, b. are not individual's / base their identity on how popular they are, and c. this because of the pack mentality of social media.
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Here is an example of what I was talking about in class in terms of mashing up not just a compare/contrast of two leaders, but also taking a famous saying of one of them and changing it to suit the other's political legacy.
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