Unit Plan
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Royal Conservatory of Music

The Anti-bullying Magazine

For Teachers 5th - 7th Standards
Get the word out about friendship, support, and a safe school community with a media literacy lesson about bullying. Young journalists investigate instances of bullying and take descriptive pictures as they compile a magazine to fight...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Presidential endorsements: Newspapers decide

For Teachers 12th
Twelfth graders collect, organize, evaluate and synthesize information from multiple sources in order to draw logical conclusions. They communicate this information using appropriate social studies terminology in oral, written or...
Lesson Plan
Newseum

Today's Front Pages

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Take a close look at a number of newspapers with collection of lessons and activities. Using a poster (which can be found under the materials tab), learners examine the hard copy of a local newspaper. This leads into an exploration of...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Discussion: The Media

For Teachers 5th - 7th
In this discussion about media worksheet, students participate in a discussion about different types of media.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Electric Hearth

For Teachers 8th - 12th
Learners examine popular media. In this media awareness lesson, students keep logs of their interactions with media and then write an essay regarding the data.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Advertising

For Teachers 10th - 12th
Students explore the advantages/disadvantages of advertising and all it entails for the consumer. Public relations is examined in depth. In addition, media, slogans, promotion and elements of print and color are examined in detail.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Consider the Source

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explain how to critically compare news reporting from around the world, focusing on coverage of the Taliban regime. They compare and contrast television and print media reporting on the issue.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Information Overload: Looking at News

For Teachers 9th - 12th
How do events reported in mainstream newspapers, on television news, blog posts, and social network sites differ? Ask your class to investigate the way the same news item is presented in the many information sources available. Groups...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The Ad Campaign

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Students explore how political candidates use mass media to deliver their messages to voters. Focusing on specific issues in the upcoming election, students create television commercials representing different parties' views.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Current Events

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Here is an ongoing activity intended to build interest in local, national, and world news. The class is divided into four groups of approximately five students each. The groups are responsible for monitoring the daily news. They compose...
Lesson Plan
Southern Poverty Law Center

Evaluating Online Sources

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
All sources are pretty much the same, right? If this is how your class views the sources they use for writing or research projects, present them with a media literacy lesson on smart source evaluation. Groups examine several articles,...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Now That's Beautiful!

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Your class experiences dozens of messages about beauty every day by reading magazines, watching movies, and listening to the radio. Have them analyze society's view of beauty in groups after discussing several resources, including...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

A Free and Open Press: Evaluating the Media

For Teachers All
Students compare and critically evaluate the different media as sources of news, develop criteria for defining "news", experience the editorial process of selecting news stories and detect bias in news reporting.
Activity
Smarter Balanced

A New Kind of News

For Teachers 8th - 12th
Newspapers and broadcast news. Social media, blogs, and blogospheres. Class members generate a list of news sources they use to get information about events. The big idea here is to introduce the necessary vocabulary and to establish a...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Staying Informed

For Teachers 9th - 12th
Students identify the various ways the American public can stay informed on the news. In groups, they brainstorm reasons why the public should not stick to one source for their news. They use this information to examine their own current...
Lesson Plan
Newseum

Getting to the Source

For Teachers 7th - 12th Standards
Reliable news stories are based on facts from reliable sources. Young journalists learn how to evaluate the reliability of news sources by watching a short explainer video. Teams apply their new source-digging skills to a current news...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Citizens and the Media / Lesson : 3 Compare and Contrast Daily Newspapers for fact, opinion and bias

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students compare and contrast a variety of daily newspapers in order to detect bias. They critically analyze the role the media plays in responsibly reporting government activities.
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Electronic Media

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Students compare forms of electronic media. They watch a news broadcast and take notes on the content being conveyed. After viewing the broadcast, they read newspaper articles or news magazines to locate articles with similar content to...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Alternate Histories

For Teachers 7th - 12th
Students create a mixed media collage. In this visual arts instructional activity, students look at the work of Jane Ash Poitras. They create their own collage that shows their personal and collective history and experiences. 
Lesson Plan
Teaching Tolerance

Evaluating Online Sources

For Teachers 9th - 12th Standards
Newspapers, television, social media ... how do people get their news? Using the informative resource, scholars locate and verify credible sources of information. Working in small groups, they discuss strategies for evaluating the...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

Media Literacy Skills

For Teachers 3rd
Third graders watch a news story from three different networks in order to determine how the same story can be presented in three different ways. Next, working in small groups they create a newscast of a current event to share with the...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

The World in 22 Minutes: Constructing a TV News Lineup

For Teachers 6th - 12th
Learners examine several newspapers to compare front pages, headlines, and photographs, experience role of news editor, define and discuss factors that go into news judgements, and arrange twenty-two minute news broadcast by selecting...
Unit Plan
Newspaper Association of America

Critical Thinking through Core Curriculum: Using Print and Digital Newspapers

For Teachers 3rd - 12th Standards
What is and what will be the role of newspapers in the future? Keeping this essential question in mind, class members use print, electronic, and/or web editions of newspapers, to investigate topics that include financial...
Lesson Plan
Curated OER

A News Story of Your Own: Sentence and Lexical Variety

For Teachers 8th - 11th
Given the two-sentence skeleton of a news story about a car theft/joy ride, budding writers create their own version of the story varying diction and sentence structure to heighten interest and complexity in their writing. Resource...