Media Literacy Resources for Classrooms | Common Sense Education (2024)

Media literacy is a way for us to better understand our world and have our say in it. It involves understanding how -- and why -- a media message is constructed as well as its impact on the world. Effective media literacy education also involves a strong focus on civic engagement and creation, connecting people with the tools to make their voices and perspectives heard. Of course, media literacy is always evolving as technology and culture shift, and there's no shortage of smartframeworks that each define it slightly differently. All agree, however, that media literacy is an important component of learning -- whether as its own focus or a cross-curricular literacy woven deeply into every classroom.

In this collection, you'll find hand-picked, regularly updated resources to help you better understand and practice media literacy. At the top, there are featured resources as well as more comprehensive curricula. Then you'll find lessons, videos, downloadables, and games organized by a few key topic areas, like interpreting media, media creation, and media manipulation.

Jump down to a section

Media Literacy Courses and Curricula
Creating Media and Media Production
Interpreting Media and Media Messages
Media Platforms and Industries
Media Manipulation
Research on Media Literacy
Media Literacy Organizations to Explore for More

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Media Literacy Courses and Curricula

The providers below offer more comprehensive resources on medialiteracy, from courses (from just a few hours to weeks) to a curriculum linked to a scope and sequence and standards.

• Digital Citizenship Curriculum (by Common Sense Education): Features free K-12 lessonson news and media literacy.
• KQED Teach (by KQED): Aimed at teachers, these courses cover key topics and skills teachers need to not just teach but practice media literacy. For more, check out our review
• Media Literacy (by Crash Course): A 12-part video series that goes beyond the typical media literacy topics, digging into things like the history of media literacy and how policy affects the media we consume.
• Media Literacy Scope and Sequence Template (by The Media Spot): While not a curriculum, this detailed template can serve as the foundation of a whole-school approach to media literacy curricular integration. (Note: The template is linked near the bottom of the article.)
• The Ontario Curriculum (by the OntarioMinistry of Education): Maybe the best example of how to weave media literacy fundamentally into primary and secondary school curricula. Look in the Language and English sections, among others.

Creating Media and Media Production

There's a common sayingwithin media literacy education: People need to not just be consumers but creators. While it might be cliché, it's also true. Media literacy must not just be about critiquing media but contributing media that fights for a more just and inclusive world.

Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters

• 4 Ways to Integrate Media Literacy in the Classroom (Common Sense Education): This article by Rhys Daunic, founder of The Media Spot, offers a quick, practical guide to making media literacy a core part of your curriculum, including some clever media-creation projects.
• Try This! (by Ren LaFormeat the Poynter Institute): Billed as a "tools for journalism" newsletter, this weekly dispatch touches on timely topics in the news alongside suggestions for useful tools and productivity tips.
• Why and How to Use YouTube Video Essays in Your Classroom (by Common Sense Education): Video essays -- a popular genre on YouTube -- can make for great student projects; this article offers a bunch of examples for inspiration.

• YR Media: A media and storytelling organization that centers the voices and experiences of young people, particularly people of color. They consistently put out some of the most compelling and authentic journalism for teens and 20-somethings. For more, check out our review.

Lesson plans and activities

• Applied Digital Skills (by Google): If you're a Google school, these useful lessons help students useGoogle tools to create both practical and creative projects.
• A Curriculum for Digital Media Creation: Sixteen Lessons, from Storyboarding to Producing a Documentary (byMarco Antonio Torres and Ross Kallen): While this is a little out-of-date, these lessons provide an excellent framework for teaching documentary filmmaking.
• DIY (YR Media): These articles offer practical advice and tips for how to write and create modern journalism and media, from listicles to podcasts to article pitches.
• Media Production Lessons (by MediaSmarts): Browse MediaSmart'slessons focused on creating media ranging from videos to news reports.
• Remix (by the University of Notre Dame): This site features project-based lessons and outlines to help teachers plan student media-creation projects like podcasts, videos, and infographics. There's also a handy list of tools and websites.

Videos

• LEVEL UP: A Student Reporting Labs Original Video Tutorial Series (by PBS News Hour): These excellent short tutorials (and supporting worksheets) cover essential video and audio production techniques.
• LinkedIn Learning: Formerly Lynda.com, LinkedIn Learning is a subscription-based site for courses in media production and beyond. There are both pay-per-course and subscription options, but unfortunately it's tied to a LinkedIn account.
• Udemy: This video-based learning site has high-quality courses for just about anything students will need to know. You'll need to pay for each course, but once you do it'll be in your library forever.

Handouts, infographics, and posters

• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education (by the Center for Social Media): An indispensable guide for educators trying to wrap their minds around fair use in the classroom.
• Developing Habits of Reflection: Key Questions to Ask When Creating Media Messages (by Project Look Sharp): This poster is perfect for media-production classrooms.

Games, apps, and tools

• Best Tech-Creation Tools (by Common Sense Education): Browse our list of media-creation tools for all grades and types of media.
• Websites and Apps for Making Videos and Animation (by Common Sense Education): There's no question video is popular among young people, and with these tools they can create their own.

Interpreting Media and Media Messages

It's foundational to media literacy education that people don't take media messages at face value, but rather think critically about them and contextualize them. This means digging into how media messages are made, why they're made, whose interests they serve, and what they mean. This has become all the more complex thanks to the mutability of the web, and the way authority has been rewritten thanks to social media.

Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters

• Critical Media Project: An indispensable collection of videos and activities focusing on how identity is represented and negotiated in media. For more, check out our review.

Lesson plans and activities

• Get Media L.I.T.: These high-quality, comics-based lessons offer a nice blend of media interpretation, social and emotional learning, and media creation. For more, check out our review.
• Media Issues Lessons (by MediaSmarts): One of the best things about MediaSmarts' sprawling curricular resources is they have a strong focus on media representations and stereotypes, touching on issues of gender, sexuality, race, body image, and more.

Videos

• 5 Essential Media Literacy Questions for Kids (by Common Sense Education): This super-short video explains five key things kids should consider to unpack media. Use this video alongside this worksheet.
• Media Education Foundation: Feature-length documentaries (available for purchase)on a variety of important topics at the intersection of culture, politics, and media literacy.

• The Media Insider: This YouTube channel breaks down inaccessible academic theory about media analysis and representation.
• Media Minute Series (by MediaSmarts): This six-video series offers aquick overview of the key principles of media literacy.

Handouts, infographics, and posters

• Developing Habits of Inquiry: Key Questions to Ask When Analyzing Media Messages (by Project Look Sharp): Help students ask the right questions when interpreting and analyzing what they read, hear, and watch.
• Tips for Decoding Media Documents (by Project Look Sharp): Aimed at teachers, this two-page handout offers great teaching strategies for helping students effectively analyze printed media.

Games, apps, and tools

• Best Interactive Video Apps and Websites (by Common Sense Education): Use these video-editing apps and websites to remix and add commentary to everything from commercials to music videos.
• Top Tech for Digital Annotation (by Common Sense Education): These tools could be useful for students creating and sharing critiques of media, particularly web-based resources. Many also allow students and teachers to collaborate on annotations and critiques.

Media Platforms and Industries

You can't truly understand media without understanding the circ*mstances in which it gets produced. How do the platforms that host media shape the way media behaves and persuades? How do the larger industries, corporations, and economies surrounding, supporting, and/or contesting media affect which media gets produced or what it means? How do we as media consumers and creators advocate for ourselves and protect our data and intellectual property?

Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters

• Axios Media Trends: A weekly newsletter offering a rundown of key events and trends in media and publishing.

• Data Detox xYouth (by Tactical Tech): This activity book breaks down how young peoplecan take back control of their digital lives.
• Electronic Frontier Foundation: A go-to resource for anyone concerned about -- and interested in advocating for -- freedom and privacyon the internet. They also have handy guides and advice like studentprivacy settings for Chromebooks and Google/GAFE accounts.

Lesson plans and activities

• Advertisem*nts and You (by Teaching Tolerance): This K-2 lesson helps kids understand what an advertisem*nt is, and recognize that companies target kids for revenue.
• Big, Big Data (by Common Sense Education): Data drives internet profits, and this lesson helps students recognize why and how companies collect and sell their info for profit.
• Clicks for Cash (by Common Sense Education): Explore the profit motive behind fake news websites.
• Risk Check for New Tech (by Common Sense Education): Get students thinking critically about what they give up whenever they sign up for a new service or device.
• Web Literacy(by Mozilla): These activities peel away the layers of the web, helping students understand the way websites, social media, and more work.
• You Are the Product (by Teaching Tolerance): Get students to reflect on the business behind social media, and the mathematics of viral success.
• SurveillanceU (by YR Media): This fun and creepysimulation tool helpshigh school students seethe ethical consequences of AI tech in education.
• Most Likely Machine (by Artefact): Use this stylish, fun interactive experience to helpstudents in grades 6-12 understand the basics of algorithmic literacy.

Videos

• Media Literacy (by Crash Course): This is a 12-part video series that covers all of media literacy, but it's most notable for how it focuses on the larger issues of money, policy, and ownership behind media.
• The Moral Bias Behind Your Search Results (by TED and Andreas Ekström): A good way to introduce the idea of Google's search results -- and other algorithms -- being the product of human decisions.
• Most Popular Websites 1996-2019 and Most Popular Social Networks 2003-2019 (by Data Is Beautiful): These two mesmerizing videos will help students place today's web in context, and gain a big-picture understanding of how platforms come and go.

Handouts, infographics, and posters

• Keep Your Students (and Yourself) Safe on Social Media: A Checklist (by Common Sense Education): Social media platforms try to capture and monetize as much data about us as possible, so make sure to protect your students' privacy with these simple tips.

Media Manipulation

Part of interpreting media is also identifying when and how it's been altered and manipulated. Media literacy helps us see how media has been altered throughout history, and the specific challenges it poses today to truth and democracy.

Websites, articles, feeds, and newsletters

• Recalibrating Our Approach to Misinformation (by EdSurge): Mike Caulfield, one of the leading experts on media literacy for the web, flips three common misinformation myths.
• That Uplifting Tweet You Just Shared? A Russian Troll Sent It (by Rolling Stone): This article, based on research from Clemson University, reveals how disinformation is often about about telling you what you want to hear.
• What Are Deepfake Videos? (by Common Sense Media): Turn to this explainer article to get a handle on this peculiarmodern media phenomenon.

Lesson plans and activities

• Are DeepfakeVideos a Threat to Democracy? (by Common Sense Education): Use this video and lesson to help students understand what deepfakes are and how they might impact democratic institutions like fair elections.
• Digital Media and the Brain (by Common Sense Education): Explore the ways media is designed to capture and keep attention.
• Don't Feed the Phish (by Common Sense Education): Teach students the essential skills to fend off scams and identity theft online.
• Hoaxes and Fakes (by Common Sense Education): This lesson shows students how to use fact-checking skills when watching questionable videos.
• Spot a Bot: Identifying Automation and Disinformation on Social Media (by Data for Democracy): This deep dive into bots -- which are a key tool of disinformation campaigns -- defines and describes the different types of bots and the tactics they use to influence and manipulate.

Videos

• Disinformation and Democracy Part I and Part II (by Al Jazeera): This well-researched, two-part video series features a host of experts discussing the varied ways democracyis threatened by disinformation and propaganda.
• Who Is Manipulating Facebook? and Twitter Platform Manipulation (by SmarterEveryDay): These three engaging videos investigate how popular social media platforms are vulnerable to -- and battling against -- disinformation.

Handouts, infographics, and posters

• Understanding Information Disorder (by First Draft): This in-depth research report maps out the media-manipulation landscape, breaking it down into seven key categories.

Games, apps, and tools

• TinEye and Google Reverse Image Search(Note: Click on the camera icon if you're on a laptop or desktop): The two best tools for finding out where else an image appears on the web. Great for fact-checking faked, manipulated, or inaccurately citedimages.

Research on Media Literacy

Below you'll find some researchers and research organizations who focus on medialiteracy. We've also highlighted a few key pieces of their work.

• Data & Society: Best source for info on media manipulation and its political implications.
  • Deepfakes and Cheap Fakes
  • Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online
• Media Education Lab: Trailblazing research lab that has contributed a staggering amount of foundational work in media literacy education.
• MediaWell: Regularly updated collection of research on media manipulation.

• National Association of Media Literacy Education: This key membership organization for media literacy educators publishes an academic journal and reports on the spread and extent of media literacy education.

Media Literacy Organizations to Explore for More

• Center for Media Literacy
• Connected Learning Alliance
• Media Education Lab
• Media Literacy Week
• Media Smarts
• Mozilla Foundation
• National Association for Media Literacy Education
• Poynter Institute
• MediaWise