Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

*Click to open and customize your own copy of the Media Literacy Lesson Plan.

This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP topic Media Literacy, and supports the standard of evaluating how point of view and purpose shape content in different media.  Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of  projects.

Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE

Display an advertisement for something students might find exciting, like a new kind of electronic device. Ask:

  • Who might have created this ad? What is the goal? 
  • What do you notice about this ad? What do you wonder? 

Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE

  • Read the description on the Media Literacy topic page. 
  • Play the Movie, pausing to check for understanding. 
  • Have students read one of the three Related Reading articles. Partner them with someone who read a different article to share what they learned with each other.

Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS 

Students take the Media Literacy Challenge and Quiz, applying essential literacy skills while demonstrating what they learned about this topic.

Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND

Students express what they learned about media literacy while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student needs. 

  • Make-a-Movie: Produce a commercial for a concert sponsored by a fast food chain that shows the answer to this question: How does bias impact the message? 
  • Make-a-Map: Make a concept map comparing and contrasting the way different articles and advertisements report about the same topic. 
  • Creative Coding: Code a game challenging  players to sort content from different kinds of media and persuasive strategies each one uses. 
  • Primary Source Activity: Analyze the composite photographs to determine their authenticity, and cite details to answer the accompanying questions. 

More to Explore

Digital Citizenship Resources: Continue to build understanding around digital citizenship with more BrainPOP  BrainPOP’s topics, games, and teacher resources.

Newsfeed Defenders: Apply media literacy skills to outlaw viral deception, detect hidden ads and banish false reporting in this role-playing game.

Teacher Support Resources:

 

Lesson Plan Common Core State Standards Alignments