Teaching Media Literacy

Photo by Van Tay Media on Unsplash.

What is Media Literacy?

According to the Ontario Language Curriculum (2006), Media Literacy "focuses on the construction of meaning through the combination of several media 'languages' – images, sounds, graphics, and words" (p. 13). Media languages are part of the everyday lives of our students, making it imperative that they can create and find meaning through these media languages.

In Ontario, one of the four strands of the Language Curriculum is Media Literacy. What does that mean for educators in the province? It means that we must ensure all students learn to become media literate across all grades. The Media Literacy strand of the Ontario Language Curriculum (2006) concentrates on students developing the skills they need to create, understand and critically interpret various media texts

There are many ways an educator could choose to approach Media Literacy in the classroom. I will be using the remainder of this blog post to share resources that educators could use to teach Media Literacy to their students.

Media Smarts is a Canadian not-for-profit charitable organization that focuses on teaching children and youth critical thinking skills so that they can engage with media as informed and active digital citizens.

Media Smarts has created a series of videos that teachers can use in their classrooms for teaching their students about Media Literacy. Embedded below is the first video in Media Smart's Media Minute videos. More videos and lesson plans to accompany each video can be found here. Each video and lesson plan is designed to work for grades four to six students.



The videos and lesson plans provided by Media Smarts are a great starting point for teachers to use when talking about Media Literacy with their class. Teachers should ask students to connect Media Literacy to their own lives. The video above ends by asking students to identify all the kinds of media that are present on a typical day of their life. Teachers can extend this and ask students what their lives would be like without those kinds of media.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash.

Edutopia is an excellent resource for educators to utilize. Edutopia hosts blog posts from many different educators, giving a wide range of perspectives and ideas. I recently came across a post on Edutopia written by Kyleen Gray titled: Using Instagram to Teach Poetry. Kyleen explains that she studies Instapoetry as a genre of poetry with her class and then has students write their own Instapoetry. Although this is written with high school students in mind, this concept could be easily applied with a grade eight class.

Per the Ontario Language Curriculum (2006) Media Literacy Strand, students are to both understand and create their own media. In grade eight, students are also expected to read and write poetry. Many grade eight students are active on social media such as Instagram, so Instapoetry could be an engaging way to meet several curriculum expectations.

Finally, according to the Ontario Language Curriculum (2006), students should be able to understand a variety of media texts. It is important, especially for students who are frequently online, to be able to distinguish real news from fake news. The video embedded below is from CBC Kids News. The goal of this video is to help children understand when a news story is likely fake.


Watching this video would be a good opening activity for a lesson on spotting fake news. Then, educators can discuss with their students what to look for to determine if a story is real. The main portion of this lesson would be to assign articles to students (some real and some fake) and ask them to write a report on why their story is real or fake.

Media literacy is vitally important for educators to teach. Educators can support each other and their students by sharing helpful resources, such as the ones I mentioned above.

Until next time!

Miss Amanda Maier