Explain that when we see or hear media, we usually think it’s like looking through a window. But all media works are actually inside a frame. The frame is what the media makers choose to show us.

Ask students:

Frames control space by showing us just part of something. How do the frames in the different images control what we can see?

• Slide 4 shows us just the hippo peeking out from behind the door, so we don’t know it’s a puppet. Slide 5 shows us more, so that we can see the puppeteer. But this picture is framed too! There might be all kinds of things we can’t see around them.

Frames control time by showing us just some of what happens. How does the house hippo video frame time differently from the slides?

• The video includes just a few moments of the hippo puppet at a time, to make it more believable. Although each of the slides is just a still image, the slides show you more parts of the “story” of how the video was made.

How does the video in the last slide use framing to control space and time?

• Framing space keeps us from seeing the person who is actually dropping makers into the pitcher. On the other hand, framing time to show us that person lets us see how the “trick” of the video was done.

Now give each student a copy of the Inside the Frame handout and have them cut out the centre portion. Have them hold it up in front of them and look around the classroom, observing how much (or how little) they see when they can only look through the frame.

Have students tape their Inside the Frame handout to a blank piece of paper so that it can open and close like the cover of a book.

Have them do a drawing on the blank page where something important is hidden by the frame, so that lifting the frame makes you see the picture differently.

Ask them to write, record or explain how the full and the framed picture are different and why they chose to frame the picture the way they did.