Resources for Teachers - Television
This lesson focuses on put-down mentality 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.
“Scripting a Crime Drama” is intended to follow lesson two of the Crime Drama unit: “Viewing a Crime Drama.” In this lesson, students will tackle the scripting of a television crime drama by looking at the plot formulas and structures that underpin this genre. Students begin by studying a script from an actual television series and then they script and produce their own crime dramas.
This lesson introduces students to some of the myth-building techniques of television, by comparing real world (s)heroes with TV world (s)heroes and by looking at stereotypes in the world of TV (s)heroes.
In this lesson, students become aware of the types and amounts of violence in children’s programming, and how media violence influences young viewers.