In my jurisdiction, Media Literacy is one of the strands reported on in Language Arts. Instead of teaching Media Literacy in isolation, I have used some ways to access, analyze, evaluate & create Media Literacy in different areas of the curriculum:
Language Arts: Have students document and store memories using pictures, photos, letters, journals or videos.
Visual Arts: Create a logo for a school department, a t-shirt or even a school fundraising project.
Social Studies: Focus on one current event. Look at how the issue is broadcast in various ways. This is a great way to introduce comparing and contrasting as well.
Math: Explore ratio, fractions, decimals and percentages of commercials to television shows; look at ratio of ads to newspapers or magazines.
Science & Technology: Show how media assists in scientific discoveries or inventions. Explore news broadcasts, magazines or websites associated with science.
Healthy Living & Social Responsibility: Is there gender bias in toys? Look at how advertisements (both commercial and non-commercial portray toys).
For more indepth media literacy exploration, the following resource has been developed to provide practical ideas:
Great ideas! It's always helpful to link different learning areas together.
ReplyDelete