Media Smarts
Media Smarts: Stay on the Path Lesson One: Searching for Treasure
This four-lesson unit on search skills and critical thinking teaches students how to target and specify their online searches to avoid unwanted results, how to judge whether a link, search result, or website is legitimate or phony and...
McREL International
Mid Continent Research for Education and Learning: Deconstructing Media Messages
This brief lesson focuses on the roles that many different people play in the creation of media messages and advertising.
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Whose Streets?: Lesson Plan Clips
This lesson provides a framework for critical analysis of current and historic race relations in America through the lens of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, Jr., a young unarmed black man, by white police officer Darren Wilson in...
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Sti Lesson 28 the Electric Hearth
As educators, the goal of developing students into discerning, critical viewers may enable them to negotiate with more confidence through the treacherous waters of today's multimedia. Studying the various viewpoints as expressed in...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: The Documentary: A Fragile Trust: Lesson Plan
This lesson explores the Jayson Blair story and other cases where journalists have breached the code of ethics in their efforts to get the story out. Students will examine the journalism code of ethics and its importance. They will view...
Other
Channel One: Lesson Plan: How to Spot Fake News
A lesson plan explores the problem of fake news sites, featuring a Channel One News video about the issue. What are the best approaches to decoding the real from the fake?
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Why Is It Important to Educate Girls?: Pbs News Hour
When girls are allowed to go to school, they have a significant impact on their family and community. Students learn and think critically about the variety of reasons why it is in everyone's best interest to ensure that all girls, across...
Common Sense Media
Common Sense Media: Education: Private and Personal Information (3 5)
As students visit sites that request information about their identity, they learn to adopt a critical inquiry process that empowers them to protect themselves and their families from identity theft. They learn the difference between...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Point of View: Motherland: Lesson Plan: Family Planning
Engaging youth in discussions about family planning is difficult for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the general discomfort adolescents have talking with adults about sex. Sometimes it can be easier to talk about...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Understanding the Opioid Epidemic: Effects of Opioids on Communities, What Can Be Done: Lesson Plan
In this lesson plan, to be used with the program Understanding the Opioid Epidemic, students will explore the dangers of opioids and what effects they have on whole communities. They will use critical thinking skills to think about ways...
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Cover to Cover: Comparing Books to Movies
A 7-instructional activity unit where students critically analyze how a film adaptation portrays a novel to see what impact it had on the retell of the story. They then design a movie DVD cover and write a DVD insert based on what they...
Discovery Education
Discovery Education: Understanding Stereotypes
This lesson will open students' eyes to hurtful stereotypes by making them examine their beliefs. This is a three-day lesson that includes whole class and small group activities, critical thinking questions, suggested resources and...
Media Smarts
Media Awareness Network: Hoax? Scholarly Research? Opinion?
When researching on the Internet, how critical of an observer are you? This site provides three group exercises to help you determine if a website is a hoax, scholarly research, or personal opinion.
Other
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago: H. C. Westermann Curriculum
Useful curriculm for introducing key sculpture and printmaking concepts focuses on the work of H. C. Westermann, whose work is often valued for its criticism of consumerism, militarism, and other social phenomena. Provides overviews and...
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Sti Lesson 39: People Everyday
This activity with a song of my choice, 'People Everyday' by Arrested Development, will be an introduction to literary analysis and media/popular music literacy. Learners will learn to examine critically what they view and hear. They...
PBS
Pbs Mathline Lesson Plan: Mirror, Mirror [Pdf]
The goal of this PBS instructional activity is for students to apply spatial reasoning, problem solving, and critical thinking skills to assess which regular polygons will tessellate. A detailed lesson plan that includes related...
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Just Desserts
Identify advertising techniques designed to encourage children to overindulge in unhealthy foods. Explore the motives behind advertising and use your knowledge to think critically about ads all around you. Scroll down to "Just Desserts,"...
ArtsNow
Arts Now Learning: Self Portrait Collage [Pdf]
In this instructional activity, learners look at how non-human images can be used in a self-portrait to portray aspects of a personality.
ArtsNow
Arts Now Learning: Mona Mesa: What Is Your Opinion? [Pdf]
In this lesson, 1st graders look at a print of "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo DaVinci and talk about what they see, searching for visual clues to help them form an opinion. They discuss the importance of portrait paintings during the...
ArtsNow
Arts Now Learning: Self Portraits With the Touch of a Finger [Pdf]
In this lesson, students will explore self-portraiture by looking at classical portrait paintings, such as Diego Velazquez's La Infanta Margarita or Raphael's Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione. A close look at these works reveals...
PBS
Pbs Lesson Plan (Affluenza): Be an Adbuster
Through an integrated approach from PBS, students examine the messages conveyed in print advertisements. Using parody, students are asked to alter the message of an ad to present a different or opposite point of view. Lesson may be more...
Huntington Library
Huntington Library: Garden Lesson Plans: Experiments in Tea Dyeing [Pdf]
An investigation for younger students to learn how plants were used in the past to dye cloth. Students will dye pieces of fabric using different types of teas and compare the results. Worksheets are included.
Huntington Library
Huntington Library: Garden Lesson Plans: Elements of a Japanese Garden [Pdf]
A multi-faceted activity where students learn about the elements of a Japanese garden, then construct a peepshow book that demonstrates their understanding of foreground, middle ground, and background to represent a Japanese garden....
Huntington Library
Huntington Library: Garden Lesson Plans: Learning From Leaves: Adaptation [Pdf]
A scavenger hunt where students find and study examples of leaf adaptations for different environments. This activity is designed to be used on a visit to botanical gardens or greenhouse but could be adapted and used with specimens in...