The Ontario social sciences curriculum includes expectations that incorporate media education themes. The grade curriculum document Social Sciences and Humanities (2013) includes a section that demonstrates the complementary relationship between the critical thinking approach of media education and social sciences:
This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Ontario Curriculum for Communications Technology, Grade 11, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.
Outcome Chart - Ontario - Canadian History since World War I Grade 10 Academic CHC 2D
This chart contains media-related learning outcomes from Ontario, Curriculum for History CHI4U: Canada: History, Identity and Culture, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.
While parents may find certain representations of violence wholly appropriate for young people, there’s a wide continuum of content that exists online and in the media. Anything from a cartoon cat having an anvil comically dropped on his head to video images of real-life injuries and deaths can be accessed online by children and youth.
One of the most important things you can do to raise media-savvy kids is what’s called shared media engagement. That includes listening to their music, watching TV, movies and videos together, getting to know their favourite apps and playing the games they enjoy. It also includes talking to them about their media lives: what they like, what they’re excited about or looking forward to, and what worries or annoys them. While just being with them is an important step, this is also a great opportunity to help your kids think critically about the media they consume, by asking them questions about it and, sometimes, answering back.
This lesson considers how the media portrays women in politics. Students explore capsule biographies of female political leaders, from ancient times to current events – crafted from snippets of media coverage such as newspapers, magazines, TV news and encyclopedias – to understand bias in how female politicians are portrayed.
Curricular Competencies
Students are expected to be able to do the following:
Applied Design
Applied Technologies
It’s hard to clearly define the effect media violence has on consumers and young people. This is mainly because terms like “violence” and “aggression” are not easily defined or categorized. To a child, almost any kind of conflict, like the heated arguments of some talk-radio shows or primetime news pundits, can sound as aggressive as two cartoon characters dropping anvils on each other.
This outcome chart contains media-related learning outcomes from the Saskatchewan, Grade 10-A English Language Arts curriculum, with links to supporting resources on the MediaSmarts site.