Resources for Teachers - Television
This lesson is one of a five-part unit that provides teachers with ideas for teaching TV in the elementary classroom.
This lesson introduces students to the theory behind television ratings and encourages them to explore the commercial pressures driving the medium.
This lesson is part of a unit that explores news journalism across the media.
“Television Newscasts” helps students develop a critical awareness of how television news is shaped and manipulated and how they, as audience members may be affected by this.
Teachers who include media literacy in their classrooms often face issues that don’t arise in other subjects. Nothing illustrates this better than the issue of diversity in media. It’s not unreasonable for teachers to see the topic as a can of worms and be concerned about offending students and their parents – not to mention worrying about what the students themselves might say. At the same time, it’s a topic that is simply too important to be ignored: what we see in media hugely influences how we see others, ourselves and the world. As a result, an ability to analyze media depictions of diversity is not only a key element of being media literate, it’s essential to understanding many of the social issues and concerns that we face as citizens. That’s why Media Awareness Network has developed That’s Not Me – a new online tutorial for professional development to help educators and community leaders approach this issue through key concepts of media literacy.