MediaSmarts Tags - Movies

Level: Grades 5 and 6

Overview

This teaching unit helps students to become more aware of the language and techniques used in print advertising, as well as the impact of advertising on their daily lives. The unit will focus on three key media literacy concepts: construction of reality, representation, and audience.

Learning Objectives

To enable students to:

What colour is an Airbender? If this question is not at the top of your mind, it's because you haven't been following the controversy surrounding the casting of the film The Last Airbender, set to premiere in early July. The question of ethnicity in the film's casting casts a valuable light on many of Hollywood's decisions when it comes to race and gender – and the attitudes and assumptions that underlie them.

Media educator John Pungente's series Beyond the Screen, airing on Bravo!, now has its own Web site, where teachers can find resources and tips on integrating the series into their classrooms. Father John Pungente, a longtime media educator and founding Board member of MNet, planned the series as a follow-up to his acclaimed Scanning the Movies. Like its predecessor, Beyond the Screen is intended as a way of teaching viewers to “read” movies.

Level: Grades 9 to 12

Author: This lesson is based on a series of activities created by Wayne McNanney in Mediacy, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 1998, and from TVOntario's Behind The Scenes, Resource Guide For Television Literacy. 1990. Used with permission.

Overiview

Level(s): Grades 7 to 12

Author: This lesson has been adapted, with permission, from Dr. Cecil Greek's Graduate Seminar in Criminal Justice "Crime and the Media" (2001), at Florida State University.

These effects are often tied to specific events and images, such as drownings and house fires, which may result in children being unwilling to partake in related activities like water sports or building camp fires.

Note: this is the second in a series of columns looking at the history and future of Web 2.0.

In the last instalment of this series we examined the origins of the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) ethic and some of the issues around the definition of “user-created content.” Turning from the theoretical to the practical, we'll now take a look at just what is actually out there, and begin to examine some of the ethical and legal implications.

Note: this is the second in a series of columns looking at the history and future of Web 2.0.

Level(s): Grades 8 - 9

Halloween is perhaps the most contradictory of the major holidays. Though born in Ireland and other Celtic regions, today it is almost exclusively observed in the form that developed in North America; though closely associated with the imagination, it has been thoroughly commercialized, becoming an opportunity for children to buy costumes and then acquire candy (today it is the second largest commercial holiday in the US, after Christmas); and finally, though it is the holiday most closely associated with children, it is also one that has, traditionally, been all about fear.