Facing TV Violence: Rewriting the Script - Lesson
This lesson teaches children that television doesn't always offer the best solutions to conflict.
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.
Television Broadcast Ratings - Lesson
This lesson introduces students to the theory behind television ratings and encourages them to explore the commercial pressures driving the medium.
Teaching Media: The Frame as Storyteller
In this lesson, students explore the ways in which the media frame is used to tell stories.
Watching the elections
Joe McGinniss’ book The Selling of the President had a shocking title for 1968, suggesting as it did that in the television age the presidency had become nothing more than another product to be packaged and sold. MediaSmarts’ resource, Watching the Elections (a lesson for Grades 8-12), shines a light on how the different aspects of an election – from the debates to political ads to the candidates themselves – are actually media products.