Resources for Teachers - Television

Watching the Elections - Lesson

In this lesson students look at how elections are media events.

Helping kids cope with media coverage of war and traumatic events

The intense media coverage that accompanies traumatic events, such as war, acts of terrorism and natural disasters, can be very disturbing. Certain young people are particularly vulnerable and some can be seriously distressed simply by watching replays of such events.

Parents, educators, health practitioners and others who work with kids can help to lessen anxieties arising from the coverage of catastrophic events.

Junk Food Jungle

This lesson familiarizes children with how and why “junk food” is advertised to kids. The lesson starts with an introduction to advertising and a discussion of the gimmicks involved in food advertising to kids. Students discuss the various foods they see advertised in their daily lives versus the ones they don’t see, drawing important points from this data. With this information in mind, students complete an advertising log and also choose an advertisement and analyzing its subject matter in relation to what they have just learned.

Mirror Image: Reflections on Gender and Media

From the tablet to the TV screen, media are a huge influence on how we see ourselves and our world. Nowhere, perhaps, is that more true than when it comes to gender: media provide many of our ideas of what “male” and “female” are, and many of our models of how to behave, what to avoid doing, and whom to emulate in order to play the role we’ve been assigned. 

Don’t Drink and Drive: Assessing the Effectiveness of Anti-Drinking Campaigns - Lesson

In this lesson, students explore a variety of anti-drinking and alcohol awareness campaigns in order to determine their effectiveness. Students will deconstruct the different approaches that have been used by various organizations to reach teens and young adults and will debate those techniques that are most likely to resonate with youth. In a summative activity, groups of students create and implement an alcohol awareness campaign for students.