Students will become critical consumers of web resources. They will consider what elements to evaluate when using websites for research. Students learn strategies to determine the credibility of web resources.

This kit provides teachers and other educators with the materials and guidance to help fourth grade students understand the reasons that the British colonists elected to declare their independence from King George III between the years 1763-1776. As a part of these lessons students will be encouraged to consider the intent and impact of media documents from a variety of points of view including those of the colonists, King George, patriots, loyalists, slaves and Native Americans.

The purpose of this unit is to put students in the driver’s seat of their own reading by considering their own preferences and what it means to be a connected reader in our multi-media society.

 Advertisements can present a biased cultural representation that can affect our perceptions of others.  For example, a television show may show commercials with some groups of people more than others. A magazine may have advertisements and articles representing a certain type of people in a way that reinforces stereotypes.  Students need to be taught to recognize the culture that is being represented in the media they consume as well as the cultures that are absent from the same media.This is Part 5 of a 5 Part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?

A curated list articles, lesson plans, videos, and other tools for classroom use. (3)

Hyperdoc playlist of activities for digital literacy lesson. Teacher will need to populate the "Guided Practice" section with updated links to current events. Check out The Sift from the News Literacy Project to get ides.

Students will learn the potential costs and benefits of social media, digital consumption, and our relationship with technology as a society in the three-week lesson. This inquiry based unit of study will answer the following questions:

Essential Question: How can we use science fiction’s ability to predict the future to help humanity?

Supportive Questions 1: What predictions of future development has science fiction accurately made in the past? This can include technology, privacy, medicine, social justice, political, environmental, education, and economic.

Supportive Question 2: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are positive for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to make these predictions reality?

Supportive Question 3: What predictions for future development in contemporary science fiction are negative for the future of humanity? What factors need to begin in your lifetime to stop these negative outcomes?

Toolkits to help you learn more about, and implement, a media literacy program for your students. (2)

With so many people getting their news from their social media newsfeed, how can they evaluate what is good and what might be fake? With the help of a Youtube video on the subject, student do some evaluating. This lesson is part of a media unit curated at our Digital Citizenship website, "Who Am I Online?"

Students will develop criteria for determining statements of opinion and fact. Students will practice discerning statements of opinion in advertisements.  This is Part 2 of a 5 Part Unit Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying? 

Using their new skills in deconstructing advertisements, students will look at advertisements through the lens of gender.  Students will be encouraged to critically analyze the cultural stereotypes for men and women. Students will deconstruct advertisements based on gender representation.Rationale: Students will begin to see how believing in stereotypes can lead towards a negative self image for men and women.  This is Part 4 of a 5 part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?

Fake news is making news, and it’s a problem. This lesson gives students media literacy skills they need to navigate the media, including how to spot fake news.

Interactive simulations, game-based learning, and challenges to support students as they embark on a learning quest to understand media literacy. (4)

This collection of lessons represent adapted and remixed instructional content for teaching media literacy and specifically civic online reasoning through distance learning. These lessons take students through the steps necessary to source online content, verify evidence presented, and corroborate claims with other sources.

The original lesson plans are the work of Stanford History Education Group, licensed under CC 4.0. Please refer to the full text lesson plans at Stanford History Education Group’s, Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum for specifics regarding background, research findings, and additional curriculum for teaching media literacy in the twenty-first century.

This collection of lessons represent adapted and remixed instructional content for teaching media literacy and specifically civic online reasoning through distance learning. These lessons take students through the steps necessary to source online content, verify evidence presented, and corroborate claims with other sources.

The original lesson plans are the work of Stanford History Education Group, licensed under CC 4.0. Please refer to the full text lesson plans at Stanford History Education Group’s, Civic Online Reasoning Curriculum for specifics regarding background, research findings, and additional curriculum for teaching media literacy in the twenty-first century.

This course provides a critical analysis of mass media in our culture. Various types of media such as books, films, video games, and online interactions will be discussed and reviewed. This course will also evaluate how information and ideas travel between people on a large scale.

Students will use the Five Core Concepts and Five Key Questions to analyze and evaluate media messages.  These concepts will serve as the "Big Ideas" or the "Enduring Understanding" that students will need in order to become media literate.  This is Part 1 of a 5 Part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?  

It is important that students are taught to identify what is fake and what is real. After reading the content on a website about “The Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus”, an endangered animal, students will understand that when they search online that not all sources are credible.

Students will use the Five Core Concepts and Five Key Questions to analyze and evaluate media messages.  These concepts will serve as the "Big Ideas" or the "Enduring Understanding" that students will need in order to become media literate.   Students will learn the Language of Persuasion used in advertising, specifically techniques that appeal to pathos (emotion), logos (logic), and ethos (credibility/character). They will use these techniques to analyze both print advertisements and television commercials. The lesson will culminate in the analysis of advertisements and the various techniques that they use as well as an evaluation of their effectiveness.This is Part 3 of a 5 Part Unit: Media Manipulation: What Are They Really Saying?

This toolkit with six sections is designed to support educators as they introduce students to the process of finding, organizing, using, producing, evaluating, and distributing information in a variety of media formats.