For grades 3-8!
New audio and video software will make media manipulations harder to detect. These essential media literacy questions can help.
Here's how you can help.
With all the different information sources out there, media literacy is essential. Get tips for teaching your kids and students about this important topic.
Unlock media literacy in students with unique tips for teachers. Discover our Ontario curriculum-linked media literacy units for grades 1-8!
Tuesdays are the days that I plan with grade levels. We plan two weeks at a time and we have 90 minutes. Most of the time, it's actually pr...
Forms of media continue to grow each day. Equip your young learners with media literacy skills to help them be responsible and safe online!
This blog post explores engaging resources, lessons, and activities for making media literacy relevant in the 21st-century classroom.
Even my students who “don’t have time” for homework spend 2-3 hours a day on Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix. Our students consume media in amazing quantities, and it’s said that traditional advertising doesn’t work on their generation. As advertisers become more and more savvy in an attempt to break through to their younger listeners, it’s important that students understand how to identify the ways in which a speaker could be manipulating their emotions and instincts. Here are some activities for helping students develop an awareness of persuasive techniques. You can use these to start a larger conversation about being an informed viewer (and citizen!) in today’s media-driven climate. 1. Introduction to Rhetoric Use this activity to introduce (or refresh) ethos, logos, and pathos. Students watch two videos and complete a Doodle Notes worksheet, eventually synthesizing the concepts. My students really enjoy watching these short, animated videos a couple of times in order to make sure they “get it”, and the Doodle Notes provide a nice visual to help them remember the important ideas! You can grab them here. 2. “Buy My Pencil” In this activity, students try to convince each other to buy a pencil. They will employ a variety of persuasive techniques, even if they do not yet have the names for all of them. This is because students absorb persuasion constantly, and demonstrate various techniques on a hunch. After a few minutes of letting them try to sell a partner their pencil, call students back together and have them describe the techniques they used. To extend this, you can have students perform these impromptu skits in front of a larger group or in front of the class. This is a great way to get some informal public speaking practice, and I’m always a proponent of making public speaking less intimidating. 3. Introduction to Persuasive Techniques I use this interactive PowerPoint will help students put names to the techniques they’ve grown up hearing and using. Students will be able to identify techniques in context and apply their knowledge of ethos, logos, and pathos. To break up the term-definition monotony, I have students “buzz in” to identify the techniques in some example ads. I also include Think-Pair-Share to get them to generate more examples of various techniques they’ve seen in recent commercials. 4. Persuasive Tweets A fun bellringer or exit slip activity for practicing persuasive techniques is Persuasive Tweets. In 140 characters or less, students can use one persuasive technique to sell something. I’ve had success giving all students one item (similar to “Buy My Pen”) and having them draw a persuasive technique from a hat. You can download my list of persuasive techniques for this activity here. 5. News Literacy Project The News Literacy Project is a new tool that I would like to integrate into my curriculum throughout the year to help students determine the credibility and levels of bias in various news reports. I’m still in the early stages of exploring this project, but they have online modules that take students through the steps of developing media literacy. According to their site, “As students progress through the checkology™ platform, journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, NBC News and other news outlets are joined by experts on the First Amendment and digital media to guide them through each lesson’s core concepts. These e-learning experiences use real-world examples of news and information that test students’ emerging skills and lead them to mastery.” This has huge potential to help our students become informed, discerning citizens! Wow! Share this post on Facebook! 6. Commercial Analysis Lastly, my students really enjoy applying their new knowledge to commercials! This is a perfect activity to use in this post-football time of the year. Students are still talking about commercials aired during the Super Bowl, and you can find a “top ten” list of commercials to bring to class (vetted first by you for content). Have students choose a commercial, and follow this step-by-step analysis of persuasive techniques. They can complete this alone or in pairs, and can present in small groups. For an added bonus, let them show the commercials in class. Persuasive Techniques are a great way to get students engaged and thinking. You can help develop their media literacy and challenge them to consider the incoming messages. Check out these great resources by other Coffee Shop authors: Logical Fallacies by The Daring English Teacher Media Literacy/Advertising Activities by Addie Williams Critical Analysis with Disney by Room 213 (blog post) Analyzing Music Videos by Stacey Lloyd What are your favorite resources and activities for teaching persuasive techniques? Pin this article for future reference. :)
It is really hard to find resources to teach media literacy to K-2 students! If you have a subscription to Brainpop, they do have an excellent video about media literacy. You can find it HERE. Another great resource is media smarts. They have several videos about media. You can find them HERE. After introducing media with these videos, we made flipbooks in our interactive notebooks that had all the media literacy notes we needed. We also completed a couple sorting worksheets to review the concepts. At the end of our unit we created posters and pamphlets to help to promote and sell our Market Day items. You can download all the media literacy pages HERE.
Flashcards to use to get students talking about the news and the media. Easy to use and also included pair conversation questions about current events and the news. For ESL, EFL students or mainstream regular class students. See our full ebook Get Speaking flashcard prompts and discussion starters.
Media literacy is a key component to a good literacy program. Read about the top reasons about why teaching media literacy is important.
A persuasive writing and speaking activity for kids focused on identifying propaganda while watching TV.
Students answer questions in an informational poster to gauge the value of a news story and decide whether it deserves to be linked, shared or retweeted. (Poster also available for download in Spanish, Japanese and Ukrainian.)
Since switching over to working as an academic librarian at a community college, there’s a lot of focus on information literacy. It got me thinking, as a parent who has struggled to navigate parenting information, about ways that we can make that accessible to parents. For instance, while I was a children’s librarian, I felt it was important to address the vaccine issue by hosting a panel of health experts and discussing it with parents from an information/health literacy perspective. I made these two comics that cover some basic information literacy concepts. Hopefully, they are useful to your patrons, especially as people are navigating COVID-19 information. To read Michael Caufield’s ebook, click here. Lisa Nowlain is an artist and librarian. After working as a youth librarian at Darien Library and Nevada County Community Library, she now works at Sierra College as part-time faculty in the library. Tweet Share on FacebookShare...
Our students can access information in seconds, so we need to arm them with critical thinking skills and an understanding of the ethics of content creation.
Intended for the Grade 9 Media Literacy Unit. File hook, powerpoint lesson, and a cooperative learning activity. 1-2 classes to complete.
It is really hard to find resources to teach media literacy to K-2 students! If you have a subscription to Brainpop, they do have an excel...
Your students are vulnerable to the effects of advertising. Learn about how and why you should teach about advertising techniques.
Here's how you can help.
Looking for a fun project where students create their own advertisements? Using the techniques used in advertising, students must create an ad and then justify their work by writing a paragraph explaining their choices. Excellent for a media awareness activity, media literacy unit, or a study on persuasive writing! Looking for a DIGITAL VERSION of this activity? CLICK HERE! Includes a two-page handout with 10 common advertising strategies listed, complete with examples and discussion prompts! Includes the following worksheets: lesson ideas detailed assignment sheet two-page handout/list of ad techniques with discussion prompts brainstorming/paragraph planner sheet writing paper comprehensive rubric My students really enjoy this assignment and love the creativity it allows them. *PLEASE NOTE - This resource is sold as a non-editable PDF. Part of my MEDIA LITERACY / ADVERTISING UNIT - Click the link below to check it out! Media Literacy and Advertising Pack (C) Addie Williams
Though many people are just paying attention to these problems now, they are not new – and they even date back to ancient Rome.
Students who meet the ISTE Standards for Students are able to critically select, evaluate and synthesize digital resources. Use this infographic to help them understand the difference between real & fake news.
Ideas to help teach media literacy to students in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade and critical thinking ideas to help students dissect the purpose of media (TV, movies, YouTube) that they view every day.