Lesson Plans in Media Literacy - Humanities in Class Online Courses Forum

Lesson Plan for 6th Graders

Lou Inguito — Fri, 12 May 2023 02:28:28 +0000

I am including a google.doc link to my assignment. I will be using the following resources:

E.S.C.A.P.E. Junk News
Is this Story Share-worthy?
Evidence: Do the Facts Hold Up?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wQMxhFpe6lGuquSFsok9gTUDX47zizuNsKqg4NHOlQ0/edit?usp=sharing

LP Topics--Turn Things Upside Down

John Witkowski — Fri, 05 May 2023 20:41:25 +0000

The article, “FAKE NEWS—WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?” asks pointed questions on how to identify and clarify sources of fake news and how to hone critical media literacy. After presenting my small class size fo three students who have the special needs designation of “emotional disorder,” I would do a reversed trick for “FAKE NEWS—WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?” by having students assume the role of the creator of fake news instead of being the recipient trying to decode. After the presentation and requisite discussion questions, I would ask the students to imagine they are the PR agency of a major petroleum company. What kind of fake news would be useful to counteract scientific claims that climate change disasters are not caused by rising temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels? In the lesson, “Believe It or Not?: Putting the Consumer’s Questions to Work” the student’s would again be asked to reverse their positions of inquiry and go from being recipients of information to creators of it. How could they be producers of items for consumption and what kinds of “alternative facts” could they make to embellish the advertising of their items. In the other lesson plan, “When the News Media Makes Mistakes,” I would prompt the students to commit to all the questions—just as the earlier ones had—but instead ask them to assume a nefarious angle to maintain the mistakes for the sake of sensational profits via a social media algorithm. The goal is to have students question and assume positions of power and how false information can further such dominance

Weed Out Propaganda

Alison Callaghan — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 19:50:12 +0000

After defining and listing the various techniques of propaganda, students analyze a historical and a current piece of propaganda. They determine which techniques were used and why the piece was effective.

I teach 7th grade English Language Arts in a suburban school. I teach four classes a day; student numbers for my classes range from 12 to 30 kids. Our class periods are 75 minutes long. My class is an inquiry and discussion based classroom.

This lesson would work well with my students. It gives them a chance to take what they learn and apply it to real life. Plus, it gives them the ability to work with others and discuss their thought process. I could see some great debates about the propaganda techniques occurring among groups.

I would adjust the lesson in the following ways. First, I would include more than two examples, and I would include a couple of non-examples of propaganda. This would promote true analysis of pieces and a deeper discussion of what makes something propaganda. I would also make this a stations activity with one or two pieces at each station. Students would have to complete a graphic organizer/checklist as they circuit through the stations. We would share our findings as a class. If there is dissent about whether or not a piece is propaganda or what techniques were used, students will have to talk through their different ideas to come to a consensus. Afterwards, students will journal about the activity and their through process.

Lesson Plans for Fourth Graders

Abigail Massey — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 19:30:55 +0000

I currently serve as the math coach at my school, but more regularly, I am a fourth grade teacher. That is the point of view from which I responded to this assignment in the link below. I look forward to reading some of the other posts to see what others have come up with. The lesson plans on this platform are very good, and I am excited to try some of them when I return to the classroom!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/119bne2WySwY5w5oXT5jEXjVzfwco7ciCYj0V-E1VN7A/edit?usp=sharing

Evaluating Election Ads

Angela Burnson-Aguilar — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:04:33 +0000

This lesson analyzes campaign ads and techniques they use to convince voters, claims and feelings. Students will watch 4 campaign ads, including LBJ’s “Daisy Girl” and W Bush’s “Wolves, make notes of the techniques, and then have small group discussions.

As I teach World History, I think it would be harder to incorporate into my lessons. But I think it would work well in the “Thinking Like a Historian” unit. We’ll be heading into an election year during the next school year, so I think it will be very important to show students this. We’re in Texas and during the last midterm elections, there were so many misleading ads.On TV and on the radio. With this, maybe I can show the students how the ads manipulate them and maybe they can use that information in the next voting cycle, or even take it home and talk to their parents or older siblings about it.

I’m in a rural, medium sized public high school. Our school is around 65% Hispanic and over 70% are considered economically disadvantaged. My classes range between 15-26 students. I teach on-level and AP World History, typically 10th grade but I have 9th through 12th in my class this year.

I think no matter what, during an election cycle, this will resonate with my students. Depending on the class, I think I would have to use lower level questions or sentence stems to help guide some students, especially the emergent bilingual students. I do think I’d have to be careful about the ads that I choose, as politics can get fiery. For the most part, I think I can use this as is, maybe do an extension activity researching the accuracy of the ads and/or creating an accurate response to a political campaign ad.

ESCAPE Misinformation

Alexa Jeffress — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 21:19:32 +0000

I teach an online introductory undergraduate humanities course titled “Knowledge in the Digital Age” at the University of Virginia. The 22 students in the class are in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies, with ages ranging from 18 to 65. The students’ prior educational experiences ranges from 0-30 previous college credits, and they bring a wealth of life experience to the classroom from their careers in a variety of sectors. In a course that primarily discusses the way knowledge is access, is formed, and has changed over time, the personal and professional experiences that students bring to the classroom is fundamental. Many have personally witnessed the changes in media and news over the past 30-40 years.

The lesson plan I selected from NewseumEd.org is called “Escape Junk News.” Although the plan indicates that it is for middle and high schoolers, it could be adapted to serve a college audience. The lesson begins by asking how students determine whether news is reliable. I would ask students to share this information on a whiteboard in Zoom to make the activity interactive. Then, I would introduce the E.S.C.A.P.E. acronym through a slide that displays the meaning of each letter of the word escape. I would ask the students to share how they might approach each step of the process. How have they used similar methods in the past? Is there anything new or surprising here that we, as a class, did not come up with in our whiteboard activity?

Next, I would break the students into breakout rooms on Zoom and assign each group 1-2 letters of the ESCAPE acronym as a basis for analyzing a news article. After 15 minutes, I would invite the class back to the main room for a debrief about what was discussed in breakouts. As a group, using the ESCAPE acronym, we would decide if this is a trustworthy news source. To move the conversation further, we would consider several questions as a group (the first two are from the lesson plan and the last three are my own contributions):

From one E.S.C.A.P.E. concept alone, could you make a determination about the reliability of this story? Why or why not?
Which of these concepts do you think is the most helpful in figuring out whether information is reliable? Why?
Has the process of determining whether a story is reliable gotten easier or more challenging over the past 20 years?
How might reliable news (or lack thereof) have an impact on democracy?
How might identity, socioeconomic status, and/or political affiliation have an impact on what individuals perceive to be reliable news?

Source: https://newseumed.org/tools/lesson-plan/escape-junk-news

Can I trust the source and should I share it?!

Sasha Elias — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 18:16:22 +0000

While I am out of the classroom right now, I am imagining a lesson for 7th/8th graders to analyze sources and figure out what they would post on social media if they were using it. This connects to a lot of the worries about AI and computer generated pictures that can often confuse the public and require a level of scrutiny that not all media consumers use.

First, we would use the worksheet Can Trust the Creators? and use one article to read in groups. This worksheet is detailed and effective at getting young people to dig into the questions of who is creating this content and its connection to advertising and politics.

After we did this as a whole class, I would use the Is this Share worthy? Lesson plans and content to bring the level of questioning to online sources.

I can imagine a course where it would be great to do weekly lessons on media literacy to build their skills and practice analyzing media. An article I saw this week that I would enjoy using with students is about Fake AI images being spread online. This connects directly to their consumption of media and is an easy one to see the impact on individuals who do not realize they are fake.

The differentiation for students will be important when doing these lessons. Group work will help students read together and analyze the texts/sources, instead of rushing through. I think the worksheets are well laid out and helpful for students; I love when students can take notes and not worry about their own writing style. We could get to a project or formal writing later in the unit. And of course, conversation and circulating will be key to make sure students are learning and engaging in the work.

Teaching Students the Steps of assessing sources

Melissa Jenkins — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 23:32:33 +0000

I looked at three posters/worksheets that used acronyms or s step-by-step flow chart to take students through the steps of assessing news sources:

S.E.E.D.: To detect propaganda, look for simplification, exploitation, exaggeration, and division.

E.S.C.A.P.E.: Evidence, Source, Context, Audience, Purpose, Execution

"Consumers Questions": Who, Why, How, When, What, Where

I really liked the consumers questions because they are familiar to me and probably many of us as "journalist" questions. It seems easier to remember than "Seed" and "Escape" and mirrors the questions students could ask themselves as they read media content AND as they conduct their own research to create media content. I also like the invitation to think of the journalist as another "consumer" - that the journalist perspective is in some ways similar to the reader's perspective. They are trying to piece the story together from the outside as well. We can assess their work and also do "journalistic" work of our own.

I teach a lot of first-year and extension school writing as well as upper-level classes for English majors and MA students at the college level.

I also like how "Consumers Questions" feel more neutral than the acronyms asking them to "Weed" out bad information or "Escape" bad information. I like the idea of going in with a neutral sense of exploration rather than automatic suspicion. Some sources may be better than we expect, and we don't want people to be afraid to try.

LP Summary - What would you do? Media Ethics Scenarios

Marie Himes — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 16:12:38 +0000

This lesson would be utilized as part of a cross-cultural virtual exchange with a group of ~35 tenth through twelfth graders; 20 of whom reside in the United States and 15 of whom reside in China. I would preface these scenarios by co-constructing a list of norms and/or expectations for journalists in each cultural context and guide students through understanding commonalities and differences. As a whole group, we would need to discuss how ethics are culturally bound and how/why our norms/expectations for journalists may be similar/different because of where we live. Then students would engage in small group discussion with these media ethics scenarios. For the first round, students would be in intra-school groups, and for the second round, students would be in cross-school groups. In these groups, students would read the scenario and answer the questions, discussing how they would handle the situation if they were editors of their school newspaper. Then we would all come back together, and students would reflect on how their conversations differed/were similar when they were in intra-school groups vs. cross-school groups.

This could be a very generative way to examine societally-bound norms around journalism and the media; however, it might be too controversial of a topic for the students in China to take part in.

https://newseumed.org/tools/lesson-plan/what-would-you-do-media-ethics-scenarios