3) Unit Three: Consumer Culture and Sport

How is sport a reflection of society?

How can sport be a mechanism to improve society?

LESSON ONE: Film Trailers about Sports, Money, and Socioeconomic Class

By the end of class, you will be able to extract messages about the importance of money and class from a series of sports-themed film trailers.

Let's Get Started! Submit your letters to celebrities/ athletes for Dr. Carolyn to edit.

Mini-Lesson: Marxist Theory

Next, click through and make your own copy of this template: Template While You Watch

Jerry Maguire: A film about a sports agent and his moral conflicts

Eight Men Out: How betting on the sports they played became the Black Sox scandal

Two for the Money: Betting in the world of sports

Moneyball: How statistical analysis can provide wins in baseball

The Color of Money: A billiards hustler mentors a risk-taking youth

Million Dollar Baby: The dream to rise about socioeconomic class in the world of boxing

Caddyshack: A comedy about how a golfer attempts to infiltrate the exclusive world of country club golf

Homework: Locate a film trailer that captures the tensions among personal satisfaction, making money, and having a particular socioeconomic class. [Note: It does not have to be about sports, but it can be.) Be ready to deconstruct it before the class tomorrow.

LESSON TWO: Deconstructing Messages about Money and Class

By the end of class, you will be able to... deconstruct media film messages about the intersection of sports/ popular culture, money, and/or socioeconomic class.

Let's Get Started! Retrieve your template from yesterday's class. (A Period) We'll take turns describing our conclusions about the intersection of sports, money, and class.

Everybody: Share the homework--- a film trailer that captures the tensions among personal satisfaction, making money, and having a particular socioeconomic class. Is it on the Unit 3 page of your personal Google website?

We'll begin in small groups and have 2-3 students play the best film trailers in front of the entire class.

Letters to Celebrities/ Athletes: Dr. Carolyn will return your letter. If approved, you'll practice filling out both a practice and a real envelope.

Homework: Locate any cartoon that captures sports/ popular culture, money, and/ or socioeconomic class. Insert it onto your Unit 3 page of your personal Google website. Write a 3 sentence interpretation of this cartoon, and wrap it around your cartoon.

LESSON THREE: Understanding Consumer Culture through a Gallery Walk

By the end of class, you will be able to... analyze cartoons through a visual analysis protocol.

Let's Get Started! Please take out your homework: "Locate any cartoon that captures sports/ popular culture, money, and/ or socioeconomic class. Insert it onto your Unit 3 page of your personal Google website. Write a 3 sentence interpretation of this cartoon, and wrap it around your cartoon."

Mini-Lesson: Visual Analysis

Sports Cartoons about Mon...y and Socioeconomic Class

Larry Johnson cartoons---At each station, view the cartoon that has been loaded on the laptop. Afterward, deconstruct it, using Part 1 of the Visual Analysis paragraph format above.

Homework: Choose any one cartoon that we shared today in class. Apply your Part 1/ bulleted list of notes to a fully composed paragraph/ Part 1 of the Visual Analysis paragraph.

LESSON FOUR: Take Me Out to the Ballgame

By the end of class, you will be able to connect the enjoyment of sports to a consumer culture.

Let's Get Started! Please open up your personal Google website to your homework: "Choose any one cartoon that we shared today in class. Apply your Part 1/ bulleted list of notes to a fully composed paragraph/ Part 1 of the Visual Analysis paragraph." We'll share by writing our best sentences on posters, and you'll receive a homework grade on the quality of your paragraph.

Student activities:

  • Fantasy Sports Survey
  • What is the Timeline of the Sports Texts of our Lives?
  • The "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" Game: Costs of Going to a Professional Sports Game
  • "Swing," by Trace Adkins
  • (Want more information? Check out The Official Site of the Boston Red Sox.)
  • BRACKETS: Men's and Women's NCAA basketball --- Plus, one student per class = Extra Credit for Updating the Brackets daily

Homework:

  • Read "Football and the Rise of Sports Television," by Davies (print handout)
  • Answer the Driving Questions for "Pro Football and the Rise of Sports Television"

Note: In our next class, you'll choose the grade you want to achieve through the way you complete the Tiered assignments for "Pro Football and the Rise of Sports Television"

LESSON FIVE: Pro Football and the Rise of Sports Television

By the end of class, you will be able to distinguish between sports as entertainment and sports as a means to gain revenue and wealth.

PART ONE: Share our answers to the Driving Questions for "Pro Football and the Rise of Sports Television"

Homework: None -- unless you haven't finished your Tiered Assignments...

LESSON SIX: Who Owns What in the Corporate World?

An E-Learning Module for Sports and Popular Culture Students

By the end of class, you will be able to... analyze how the corporate world influences each citizen's daily life through sports and popular culture.

Note: This is a 2-day lesson.

Introduction

In this unit so far, we have used visual analysis to explore the ways that sport is a reflection of the consumer society which surrounds and influences us. Now we need to start asking questions about how sport can be a mechanism to improve society through a greater awareness of options to a better life outside consumer culture. In doing so, we will learn to read the world of sports and media through keener understandings about how persuasion works.

In this E-Learning Module, you will research the broad dimensions of how sports, popular culture, and consumerism intersect. The information you compile will influence a final project that you will do at the end of this unit. This week, you'll become much more knowledgeable about what consumer culture is, how corporations influence nearly every aspect of U.S. daily life, what media can do to alter public discourse around consumerism, how deindustrialization has changed the U.S. identity, why NFL owners have the capital to be so powerful, and the degree to which you understand the constraints of economics in your own daily life.

You will receive a Mastery Learning grade for this E-Learning Module: when you complete it fully, you'll receive 100%, or 14/14 (2 points each) in Aspen. You'll also gain the background knowledge to meet Common Core standards: Range of Writing: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.11-12.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Let's Get Started! Please have two items open on your personal technology device: 1) Unit 3, Lesson 6 of the class website; 2) a Google Doc, titled, "Who Owns What in the Corporate World?" Please make sure to share your Google Doc: "Public on the Web." Please write the title of each step to make your response clearly identifiable. [Updating the Brackets daily]

Step One: Wikipedia definitions

Wikipedia offers several good definitions to help us understand what consumerism is all about. After you read these, create your own working definition of "consumerism." Your definition should be 2-3 complete sentences.

Step Two: 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy" and "Ownership Chart: The Big Six.

Survey the information in both links. Consider the following questions. Which ownership connections surprised you? Which ones seem to be conflicts of interest? How do you feel about knowing that only a few corporations maintain significant hold over our consumerism? Write 3 sentences that express your reaction to the idea of corporate control of so many aspects of our everyday life... and if people are aware of this degree of corporate control.

Step Three: Media Reform Information Center or Media Reform Links

This website is filled with links and resources on media reform. Click through any two (college prep)/ three (honors) links. What information did you learn? Write at least 2-3 sentences.

Step Four: 19 Facts about the Deindustrialization of America that Will Blow Your Mind

This article is about six years old and was written immediately after the collapse of the financial markets in 2009. Do a discourse analysis on the article. (Note: "Discourse" is written/ oral/ body language.) In other words, what particular language choices do these authors use that stand out to you? List 4-5 particular words or phrases. Afterward, write a one-sentence response to this article: do you agree or disagree, and why?

Step Five: How the Owners of All 32 NFL Teams Made their Money

Do the owners of the 32 NFL teams have any common background about how they acquired their wealth? What stories stand apart from the others, and why? What do these stories tell us about owning major league sports teams? Write a 4-7 sentence paragraph that cohesively answers these questions.

Step Six: "Billy Beane Joins AZ Alkmaar as Advisor."

Read the article. Afterward, synthesize the main idea of this article into an analysis that discusses sports, big business, and statistical analysis. Why has such an approach to sports become common?

Step Seven: Peanuts & Crackerjacks: The Economics of Sports Game

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has created a game to help individuals identify what they do and do not know about economics. And they've grounded their lessons in the discourse of baseball! Play this game with 3 other students. How well did you do? Write 3-4 sentences that describe your understanding of the world of economics after playing this game.

Step Eight (12H/ Extra Credit 12CP): Locate your own online article that intersects sports, money, and socioeconomic class. Interrogate it by answering four questions on the Marxist Theory SPC.

Day One Homework: Set up your team on our class Fantasy Formula One "SPC Racing League" --- the first race of the season is this weekend in Australia.

Day Two Homework: Finish the E-Learning Module, if you did not do so today in class.

LESSON 6.5: A 35 MINUTE CLASS

By the end of class, you will be able to... demonstrate the degree to which you have added to your prior knowledge about consumer and corporate culture.

Let's Get Started! Congratulations to the Franklin Boys' Hockey team on winning the Division One championship!

Congratulations video after the game

Boston Herald article

NCAA Brackets: Men's and Women's

Race results for Formula 1 Grand Prix from Melbourne, AU

Sign-offs for E-Learning Module

Homework: As you follow the NCAA games, make a list of 4-5 ways that money is being made from the competitions. (If you're not able to watch the games, tune into ESPN for the headlines or go to a website that is commenting on the NCAA games to get this answer.)

LESSON SEVEN: CONSUMING KIDS DOCUMENTARY

By the end of class, you will be able to ... apply concepts of consumer culture to childhood.

Note: This is a 2-day lesson plan.

DAY ONE: VIEWING

Let's Get Started! Updating the Brackets daily plus Fantasy Formula One League: SPC Racing: What is a monocoque? Image search of monocoque

We'll share our responses to the homework, which was to create a list of 4-5 ways that money is being made from the NCAA competitions.

Writing Prompt: On your personal Google website, write a 4-7 sentence response to the following question: "How is consumer culture integrated into our daily lives, and what can we do to distance ourselves from the effects of a consumer culture?"

Mini-Lesson: Marxist Theory SPC

Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. Here is the note-taking template we'll use (Dr. Carolyn has print versions for you).

DAY TWO: WRITING A REFLECTIVE RESPONSE

By the end of class, you will write a 3-paragraph reflective response about Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood.

Let's Get Started! Please follow the directions below. You have the entire class to work. If you do not finish, you may finish for homework. Dr. Carolyn will start to grade these tomorrow at 7 a.m.

Questions to Consider as ...ely: Post- Consuming Kids

LESSON EIGHT: A CURATED COLLECTION OF CONSUMER CULTURE AND SPORTS TEXTS

Day #1: By the end of class, you will be able to... read through and select four texts from four different genres that capture essential ideas about the intersection of sports and consumer culture.

Day #2: By the end of class, you will be able to... complete a template that synthesizes the Curated Collection of texts about consumerism and come up with one value that captures the essential information from these texts.

Day #3: By the end of class, you will be able to... compose an original text that conceptualizes your vision of what sports can contribute to better society through new understandings of consumerism.

Here are the links you'll need:

Below is the Curated Collection of Texts for the Consumer Culture Unit. Start by picking one from each column, reading/ viewing/ listening to it, and completing the "Template for Reviewing a Selection of Curated Texts."

One non-fiction print text to read

One set of visual images to view

One composition to listen to

One literature print text to read

Here are the Driving Questions We've Been Considering for this Consumer Culture Unit:

What is "consumerism?" How are sports and money necessarily interconnected? How do children become accustomed to the connections between sport and money? How might we separate consumer culture and sport to create a better society for fans?

Review of Unit Three: Economic and Monetary Levels of "Acceptance" and "Resistance" in U.S. Sports Culture

We looked at a wide-range of disciplinary perspectives on sport through body, mind, and culture as relate to a market economy. As we did so, we zoomed in on the way that consumer culture and the world of professional sports are inextricably tied. We also tried to figure why a secondary result of consumer culture is to invite some people in and to prevent other people from gaining access to success in professional sports.

Rubric (Click here for the Rubric.)

Best of the Best template

"Casey at the Bat," by Thayer (readers' theater version)

Copyright: Carolyn Fortuna, Ph.D., 2016