What do Halloween costumes say?
This activity, adaptable across grades, is designed to help students look critically at the Halloween costumes marketed to them.
Favourite Sports and Athletes: Introduction to Sports Media - Lesson
This lesson develops a beginning awareness by students of how they feel towards, and respond to, different sports, and how the media represents athletics.
The Anatomy of Cool - Lesson
This lesson helps students become more aware of the media's role in determining what, and who, are perceived as being cool.
Ads That Don’t Look Like Ads
In this lesson, students learn what makes something an ad and how to distinguish advertisements from reviews, focusing on the key concepts of genre, tropes, bias, disclosure, and framing. Students begin by viewing and analyzing a video to prompt critical questions about the creator’s intent and visual style, then delve into the advertising genre by learning about its essential elements, like the presence of a product and brand. Students examine the differences between the “ad” and “review” genre and also use companion reading skills to evaluate the reliability and potential bias of a source by searching for undisclosed "brand deal" or "sponsored" content. Finally, students create two media pieces about the same product—one crafted as a persuasive ad and the other as an honest review—to demonstrate their ability to apply the genre elements and tropes learned throughout the lesson.
Click If You Agree
When you sign up for a service on a website or use an application for the first time, do you read the privacy policy and terms of use thoroughly? Or, like most of us, do you click “I Agree” as fast as you can?