Resources for Teachers - Diversity in Media

Diversity and Media Ownership

In this lesson students are introduced to the media literacy key concepts that “media are created to re-present reality” and “media are influenced by commercial considerations.”

Introducing TV Families - Lesson

This lesson encourages children to explore the differences between their real families and TV families by imagining how their own families might be portrayed on a television show.

Screen Stigma: Looking at mental illness in popular media

Students begin by viewing a slideshow that explores common stereotypes of mental illness and mental illness treatment in media. They read a prepared analysis of the portrayal of mental illness in a TV show popular with teens, then in a small group analyze another text of their choice. Finally, students create an annotated version of a scene or excerpt from a text in which they analyze and evaluate its portrayal of mental illness.