What do Halloween costumes say?
This activity, adaptable across grades, is designed to help students look critically at the Halloween costumes marketed to them.
The Anatomy of Cool - Lesson
This lesson helps students become more aware of the media's role in determining what, and who, are perceived as being cool.
Exposing Gender Stereotypes - Lesson
This is the first of three lessons that address gender stereotypes. The objective of this lesson is to encourage students to develop their own critical intelligence with regard to culturally inherited stereotypes, and to the images presented in the media - film and television, rock music, newspapers and magazines.
The Privacy Dilemma
In this lesson students learn the ways that the apps they use are designed to encourage them to share more information—both with other users and with the apps themselves. They are then introduced to the idea of persuasive design or “dark patterns” and investigate whether these are used to make it more difficult to opt out of data collection on popular apps. Finally, the class creates a “rogues’ gallery” to help them identify dark patterns when they encounter them.
Media Kids
In this lesson, students deconstruct gender portrayal and depictions of boys and girls in the media. They begin by looking at the appearance and mannerisms of boys and girls in TV, movies, ads and comic books and identify any stereotypes that are used. In a series of group activities, students explore gender stereotypes and representation in greater depth, as well as compare these representations to their own life experiences.
Prejudice and Body Image
This lesson lets students take a good look at our society's pressures to conform to standards of beauty - particularly to be thin - and the related prejudice against being "overweight".
Perceptions of Youth and Crime
In this lesson students develop an awareness of the ways in which public perceptions regarding young people have been affected by media portrayals of youth violence and youth crime.
The Constructed World of Media Families
In this lesson, students identify the differences between TV families and real families by analyzing the conventions used by TV shows; and by comparing the problems and actions of television families to real world families.
Advertising and Male Violence
To make students aware of the ways in which male violence is used and promoted in advertising.
Images of Learning: Secondary - Lesson
This lesson helps students become more aware of the stereotypes associated with portrayals of students and teachers on television and on film.