Relationships and Sexuality in the Media

In this lesson, students learn to question media representations of gender, relationships and sexuality. After a brief “myth busting” quiz about relationships in the media and a reminder of the constructed nature of media products, the teacher leads the class in an analysis of the messages about gender, sex and relationships communicated by beer and alcohol ads. Students analyze the messages communicated by their favourite media types and then contrast it with their own experience.

Alcohol Marketing, Digital Health, Gender Representation, Marketing & Consumerism, Movies, Pornography, Sexting, Television

Advertising techniques

How advertising works… even when you don’t realize it. Just letting kids know they’re being advertised to is not enough to make them engage critically with an ad. Helping kids recognize how advertising works is essential, too. Even young kids can become more skeptical about marketing when they’re told why and how ads try to persuade them.

Marketing & Consumerism

Online Commerce

Kids don’t just see ads in media: more and more, they buy things right on their screens. This section looks at the ways that young people shop online and how they can be manipulated into spending.

Marketing & Consumerism

Tobacco, alcohol and cannabis

“Advertising has always sold anxiety, and it certainly sells anxiety to the young. It’s always telling them they’re losers unless they’re cool.” (Mark Crispin Miller, The Merchants of Cool, 2000)

Marketing & Consumerism

Children and advertising

Kids are a highly desirable market for advertising: they control almost 150 billion dollars of spending in the U.S. alone and have a lifetime of spending ahead of them.

Marketing & Consumerism

What is this cereal box saying? Printable activity sheet 

This printable activity sheet introduces basic media literacy skills and concepts and is suitable for use in homes, schools and libraries. It can be completed independently, but children will learn more if you discuss the activity with them. Younger children may need help reading the instructions and completing the activity. 

Marketing & Consumerism

Don’t show them the money, talk about it

As part of digital media literacy, I think it is important to learn about financial literacy too. As our kids get older and we open bank accounts for them, they get jobs, buy their own items etc., having a sense of financial literacy is a must.

Cyber Security, Marketing & Consumerism, Online Marketing, Parents

Media Literacy for the 2024 Provincial General Election in British Columbia

This lesson package is designed to be modular, allowing teachers to choose activities that are most relevant to their students. The lesson includes: an opening “minds on” activity that introduces essential concepts of election-related misinformation, helps students retrieve prior knowledge, and shows the relevance of the topic;  several activities which teachers can choose from based on the needs and context of their classes; a closing activity that introduces students to different strategies for verifying election-related information, including the idea of turning to a best single source (in this case, Elections BC). They then learn and practice engaging in active citizenship by responding to election-related disinformation.

Authenticating Information, Journalism & News, Marketing & Consumerism

Tobacco Labels

In this lesson, students debate the effectiveness of health warning labels on tobacco products.

Marketing & Consumerism, Tobacco Marketing