Ideas on How to Teach Media Literacy
There are no two ways about it. Media, in all its positive and negative forms, has permeated the human experience. It will only grow more invasive as time and technology progresses. It is important to add media literacy to our ever expanding lists of things we must teach in the English classroom. Media literacy should be a focus in all subject areas, but it seems like the English and history classes are the dumping grounds for improving most societal problems.
I digress…teaching media literacy helps students to become more aware of the world that they live in. It helps them to logically think about the intent of the media that they consume, consider who has created it and for what purposes.
There are many benefits for teaching media literacy in the classroom. It helps students to be better consumers and producers of content. It helps students to improve their critical thinking skills Teaching a media literacy unit will have a profound impact on the lives of your students inside and outside of class. It is a life skill unit of study.
We spend about a week teaching the media literacy unit in our middle school classrooms, and we focus on these three areas of study: evaluating propaganda in print ads and commercials, and how to evaluate websites and news sources. Our students are very much engaged by this unit of study, and we feel good that it will transfer into the real world with them and help them to be more discerning citizens. If you like all three of our lessons, be sure to check out our media literacy bundle.