Resources for Teachers - Television

TV Dads: Immature and Irresponsible? - Lesson

In this lesson, students explore the nature of stereotypes by looking at the negative image of the TV dad as presented in situation comedies (sitcoms) and advertisements.

Television Newscasts - Lesson

"Television Newscasts" helps students develop a critical awareness of how television news is shaped and manipulated and how they, as audience members may be affected by this.

Comparing Real Families to TV Families - Lesson

In this lesson, students learn how the media construct reality by studying the families portrayed on television, and comparing them to the real-life families they know: their own, and those of their peers.

Just a joke? Helping youth respond to casual prejudice

One of the barriers to youth pushing back against prejudice is not wanting to over-react, particularly if they feel their peers were just ‘joking around.’ Humour, however, can often be a cover for intentional bullying and prejudice. In this lesson, students analyze media representations of relational aggression, such as sarcasm and put-down humour, then consider the ways in which digital communication may make it harder to recognize irony or satire and easier to hurt someone’s feelings without knowing it. Students then consider how humour may be used to excuse prejudice and discuss ways of responding to it.

Teaching Media: Media Techniques

In this lesson, students learn how different media use different techniques to communicate meaning.