Bring Internet research and social issues to your language arts class in this activity. After investigating the topic "Media Violence and How It Affects Teenagers" on the Internet, middle schoolers work in groups to compile their...

Words are powerful ... can your class choose them wisely? Scholars evaluate news articles to discover the concepts of tone, charge, and bias during a media literacy lesson. The resource focuses on recognizing implicit information and...

Young scholars research the Columbine tragedy. They read about the media role of watchdog on the government. Students discuss and debate how the media has been involved in the latest release of Columbine videos and other material.

Orson Welles' 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" is the focus of a lesson that looks at the importance of clarity in broadcasting. After listening to the radio broadcast, class members discuss the ethical obligations to...

Explore the potential for bias in the news and in scholars' own attitudes and opinions. Begin with a quiz on youth crime to see how learners perceive crime among their peers. After looking at the correct answers, put individuals in...

Scholars watch a video featuring journalists who covered the civil rights movement, then respond to questions on a viewing guide. The video features interviews with participants and original news footage from the 1950s and 1960s. In...

Election years provide the opportunity to evaluate news media as well as the next prospective president. High schoolers read about the same event in several different news sources, varying in type, origin, and political leaning,...

What is news? What is newsworthy? Who decides and what criteria do they use? Introduce young journalists to the basics of reporting with this media literacy lesson.

High schoolers discuss ways they think women and men are portrayed in the mass media. They watch an excerpt from SISTERS OF '77 discussing media coverage of the event. Students write an essay describing their reactions to women in the...

Women Olympians have come a long way since 1900 when 22 women competed for the first time. News coverage of the Olympics has also changed dramatically. What has been slow to change, however, is the language used in the coverage of female...

The trial of Derek Chauvin, former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, is the focus of a lesson that asks pupils to compare how local, nationial, and international news organizations reported the testimony of...

A 28-slide presentation introduces viewers to the process reports go through to track and verify developing news stories. Using the reports of the attacks at Atlanta, Georgia, massage parlors as an example, viewers are taught what to...

Whether it's an election year or not, a unit on voting patterns and political campaigns will awaken the civic pride in your high school citizens. Divided into six parts, the curriculum covers various facets of an election, including...

One picture but a thousand stories. As a part of a case study of how the death of Michael Brown was reported by professional news sources and on social media class members examine the reactions of various groups to a photograph taken by...

Students identify various forms of media used in a political campaign and compare the different formats as vehicles for distributing political messages. They analyze the effectiveness of candidate's uses of different media.

Seventh graders discuss the main purposes of media. Using various advertisements, they identify the method used by the advertisers in each example. They use these methods to create and sell their own product to the class. They use the...

Not all southern newspapers covered the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Young journalists investigate how The Lexington (Ky. Herald-Leader and The Jackson (Tenn.) Sun re-examined their coverage of the movement. After...

Young historians investigate how sexism impacted the 2020 United States presidential election. They examine media coverage of the six women candidates, engage in a four-corners debate reacting to statements about gender and the...

Learners investigate the history, politics and culture of Somalia. They analyze media coverage and portrayal of the country. They focus on the role of media in reporting on Somalia and the current debate over the film Black Hawk Down.

Young scholars watch a video clip from "The Path to 9/11" and write a summary of one of the events depicted. Next, they read the 9/11 Commission Report to compare information from the report to that of the media clip. They chose one more...

The resource, a standalone, shows how news coverage of John Brown's Raid began when the event happened and how that reporting shaped perception in West Virginia history. The resource includes interesting anticipatory discussion...

Students investigate media images of cars and speed. They examine drivers' atitudes to speed by completing an activity sheet and responding to press reports about speeding drivers.

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,...

Young journalists learn to appreciate the advantages of how modern media technology enables rapid news delivery as they compare today's media revolution to how the telegraph and Morse Code revolutionized news coverage during the Civil...