Media Literacy

Media literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages of all types. This skill is vital in today's world where so many of us get most of our information through media texts, messages, and sounds. Our students need to be able to understand how all of these messages are created and the hidden meaning they usually hold below the surface.

Media literacy can help your students:
• Understand how media messages create meaning
• Identify who created a particular media message
• Recognize what the media maker wants us to believe or do
• Name the "tools of persuasion" used
• Recognize bias, spin, misinformation and lies
• Discover the part of the story that's not being told
• Evaluate media messages based on our own experiences, beliefs and values
• Create and distribute our own media messages
• Become advocates for change in our media system

I used the book Arthur's TV Trouble to introduce the concept of media literacy. The book is perfect for showing students how media creates a particular message, spin, tools of persuasion, and how to evaluate messages based on our own experiences.

After reading and discussing the book as it related to media literacy we made this anchor chart. We matched pictures to the words and placed them on the chart. We talked about each form of media and how it works as we added it to the anchor chart. I made my pictures really big so we ran out of room. I downsized them a bit for the download I posted below so hopefully they will all fit now.

For more information on teaching media literacy click here. To download the pictures and words for the media literacy chart click here.