Unit Plan
Curated OER

Understanding the Influence of the Media

For Teachers 7th - 9th Standards
Critically analyze advertising techniques, such as circular reasoning, bandwagon, testimonial, and repetition, with worksheets that effectively discuss and illustrate how the media aims to influence.
Lesson Plan
Southern Poverty Law Center

Analyzing Gender Stereotypes in Media

For Teachers K - 5th Standards
Why might toy advertisers use gender stereotypes to sell their products? Young people think critically about media messages and its role in gender stereotyping with a thought-provoking activity.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Animals in the Media

For Teachers 3rd - 9th
Sure to activate young minds, this resource asks learners to consider how media influences their personal points of view. Pupils examine how animals are portrayed in the media to understand why they feel the way they do about those...
Lesson Plan
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ReadWriteThink

Critical Media Literacy: Commercial Advertising

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
Commercial advertising—we can't get away from it, but do we realize just how often we are being advertised to? With this lesson, scholars analyze mass media to identify how its techniques influence our daily lives. Learners browse...
Lesson Plan
PBS

The Media and the War: The Penny Press, Walt Whitman and the War

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
The Mexican-American war marked a significant moment in United States history, as well as in the history of American media. The mid-nineteenth century saw the introduction of the Penny Press, which provided many American citizens with...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Media Timeline

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Young scholars study websites about the media and disabilities and identify places on a timeline where the media has influenced society with disabilities. In this disabilities lesson plan, students make a large timeline out of craft...
Unit Plan
Curated OER

Advertising and Healthy Decisions

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students analyze alcohol and tobacco ads and create parodies of them. The eight lessons in this unit include discussions about why teens smoke or drink, the psychology behind the advertising, and writing persuasive letters to agencies,...
Lesson Plan
Scholastic

Analyzing Media Messages

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Telling young people to just say no can be difficult in a world that inundates them with messages to just say yes. A lesson on media messages encourages teenagers to analyze song lyrics and advertisements that mention drugs...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Media Awareness: the Basics of Advertising

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Students explore marketing techniques. In this media awareness lesson, students watch instructor-selected advertising and identify the marketing techniques used in each of them. Students then create advertisements for products.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Analyzing Media Literacy

For Teachers 5th
Fifth graders define propaganda, evaluate World War II propaganda posters to analyze media literacy, complete War Poster Analysis worksheet, and create and share their own propaganda posters containing subject matter pertaining to war in...
Lesson Plan
Institute for Humane Education

Not So Fair and Balanced: Analyzing Bias in the Media

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Life is not always fair. Who's heard that before? This same concept moves to a larger scale using prejudice and bias. Pupils discuss where prejudice attitudes derive and how they develop throughout life. Reading comprehension...
Lesson Plan
ReadWriteThink

Persuasive Techniques in Advertising

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Help your 21st century learners develop their media smarts with this resource that has them examine the persuasive techniques advertisers use to influence specific demographics and then to use these techniques to craft their own ads.
Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

Looking at Food Advertising

For Teachers 4th - 8th Standards
Tony The Tiger, The HoneyComb Kid, The Nestle Quick Bunny. As part of a study of the methods advertisers use to sell foods and how this advertising effects their food choices, kids create their own spokescharacter and/or jingle for...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Function of Music

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Explore concepts of audience, purpose and symbols in this lesson from Media Smarts that asks students to consider all the functions of music. Through a series of discussions and activities, your class will brainstorm possible functions...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Analyzing Media Unit Sequence of Five Activities

For Teachers 7th
Seventh graders define terminology and explore the effects media has on our society and on individuals.  In this media evaluation lesson plan students work cooperatively and solve problems. 
Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

Learning Gender Stereotypes

For Teachers 8th - 9th
How do media representations influence our attitudes? Examining advertisements through the filter of gender representation forms the basis of this, the second of three lessons that address gender stereotypes. Resources include links,...
Lesson Plan
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Museum of the Moving Image

Political Ads in Historical Context

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Campaign ads target both timely issues and general themes. Presidential campaign ads from 1952 and 1988 provide class members an opportunity to compare how the topics ads choose to address can dramatically influence election outcomes.
Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

Truth or Money

For Teachers 6th - 9th
Two compelling texts about tobacco companies' influence over editorial content in print media introduce readers to the concept of advertising censorship. After study and discussion, class members compose a mock "final column" by a...
Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

Newspaper Ads

For Teachers 2nd - 5th Standards
Just how free is the press? After examining the advertising and propaganda techniques used by advertisers, class members consider the influence advertisers may exert over newspaper content. 
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

GUNS AND MUSIC

For Teachers 9th - 12th
High schoolers examine the role of the Advertising Standards Agency, the image of crime portrayed by some rap artists, the reality of crime, media influence, and society's influences on the media.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Literature And Human Rights: Questions to Apply to Literature, Other Texts, and Media

For Teachers 7th - Higher Ed
Young scholars answer a variety of discussion questions about human rights and how they may apply to and influence formal literature, the media, educational textbooks, advertising, and commercial publications.
Lesson Plan
Media Smarts

Kids, Alcohol and Advertising - Messages about Drinking

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students examine different groups in our society that deliver messages to the public about drinking and consider the influence of each of these groups on the attitudes and perceptions of young people.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Dogfighting Unit Lesson Five--The Media and Propaganda

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students consider the implications of dogfighting. In this character education lesson, students examine propaganda in advertising and then create their own anti-dogfighting advertisements.
Lesson Plan
Visa

The Influence of Advertising

For Teachers 7th - 10th Standards
Pupils become informed consumers and citizens with this lesson plan on the influence of advertising, identifying basic advertising techniques and discriminating between fact and claim in modern advertisements and commercials.