Ideas for Incorporating Media Literacy Strategies for All Grades (General Critical Thinking Skills)

• Analyze nutritional claims in advertising and their implications (like "part of a nutritious breakfast," "light" or "low calorie").
• Discuss editing techniques and special camera effects used in TV commercials (can a toy really do that, etc.) and TV programs (what would happen if a person did that in real life?), and camera techniques or airbrushing in print advertising (is that a real person? does her face really look like that?)
• Encourage children to think about what the advertising message really says (and doesn't say) about the product and what it does or what comes with it or the evidence that it really works, compared to what is implied about the product in the advertisement.
• Identify and discuss the use of "puffery" to make products look better in advertisements, including the use of sound effects, "makeup" for food products, enhanced colors, elaborate backgrounds, etc.
• Point out the use of celebrities in advertising to give products credibility and attract attention.
• Discuss distortions of reality in the media (especially in movies and TV programs) (e.g., Lassie running into a burning house to save someone, tarantulas shown as dangerously poisonous, serious car accidents in which no one is hurt, victims of crime shown as mostly white people).
• Discuss the financial basis for commercial television (audiences are sold to advertisers), movies, the internet, public television, and other media.
• Point out the "formal features" of each medium (special visual and auditory effects), including laugh tracks, sound effects, music, selectivity in camera shots and angles, etc. to create specific expectations and emotions (and if possible, give children the opportunity to create their own video programs using these same techniques).
• Discuss the implied messages about different groups of people in the media (e.g., females, people of color, elderly people) both by the ways in which they are portrayed and also by their absence from much of the media.
• Discuss how problems are solved on TV programs and in movies (often through violence) or in advertising (usually through the purchase of a product) and discuss other ways the problems might have been resolved