Teaching Media: Learning With Media

In this lesson, students learn about media as a source of information, and how this information is presented from a particular point of view.

Teaching Media: Media Techniques

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

Media and Girls

They have ads of how you should dress and what you should look like and this and that, and then they say, 'but respect people for what they choose to be like.' Okay, so which do we do first?" 

Kelsey, 16, quoted in Girl Talk

Teaching Media: Critically Evaluating Media

In this lesson, students learn how media influence how we see the world and send intentional and unintentional messages.

Teaching Media: Thinking About Media

In this lesson, children begin to think about basic concepts such as how audiences interpret meaning, and the constructed world of television and film.

Wacky Media Songs: Reading Media

This lesson series contains discussion topics and extension activities for teachers to integrate the TVOKids Original series Wacky Media Songs. This lesson focuses on how media are made, how different media and genres tell stories and communicate meaning, and the affordances and defaults of different networked media.

Women Working in the Media

Since the 1960s, feminists have argued that "it matters who makes it." When it comes to the mass media, "who makes it" continues to be men.

Talking to kids about media violence

Talking to kids about violence in the media they consume – television, movies, video games, music and the Internet – can help them put media violence into perspective and perhaps diffuse some of its power. 

Sex and Relationships in the Media

The pressure put on teens through ads, television, film and new media to be sexually attractive—and sexually active—is profound. Not only that, but media representations of relationships often teach unhealthy lessons.

Media Stereotypes

This lesson familiarises students with stereotypes and helps them understand the role that stereotypes play in television’s portrayal of life. The lesson begins with a discussion about the types of stereotypes that are common in media, why stereotypes are used in media, and the possible negative influences of stereotyping. Students will analyze a media character in terms of stereotypes and then create their own character as a way of demonstrating their awareness of stereotyping. To further increase their awareness of stereotypes, students will participate in a number of writing, drawing and viewing activities that include deconstructing segments from television programs, drawing stereotypical and non-stereotypical figures, and writing a poem about stereotypes.