Dear Parents,
What comes to your mind when you think of the term ‘media’? Yes. It is indeed more than just advertisements, newspapers and magazines. Television, radio, cinema and the internet have infiltrated our lives and have changed the way we communicate with each other. In the olden days, one of the ways kings and ministers gathered information was by using the help of pigeons! Today, information is available at the click of a button.
Our first unit is about “Media”.
Media! A look into…
Use of media and how it influences the decisions and opinions of individuals and societies-Central Idea
Transdisciplinary theme: How we express ourselves
How does media impact our lives?
Without knowing, many of the choices we make are due to the impact of media. In this unit, your child will be inquiring about
✦ The different kinds of media and their roles
✦ Ways to make media effective
✦ The impact of media in our lives
We will be looking at the unit through the concepts of function, perspective and reflection in order to understand the central idea..
In language, we will focus on persuasive writing. Students will identify, analyse and create persuasive text in order to influence their audience. They will learn to carefully select rich and powerful vocabulary as well as create effective sentences using different stylistic devices such as alliteration, similes and metaphors.
In Maths, students will look at various data and place values in order to appreciate the impact media has on our lives, particularly children’s lives.
Students will build on their social skills in this unit as they work collaboratively to understand the impact of media.
Students will learn to write newspaper articles in Hindi. The will find opportunities to read Hindi newspapers and magazines to analyse the text in it.
As parents, you can do much to enhance your child’s learning experience. While you watch programs on television or flip through different magazines and newspapers, you can discuss the positive and negative impacts they may have on people. If there are media experts among you, please do let us know. We would love to have you over as a guest speaker.
We intend to visit a newspaper office or television studio in order to understand the concept of mass media. If you have any better suggestions, please feel free to call or mail us.
Thank you,
Yours Sincerely,
Grade 5 Teachers
Image sources:
Resources for Teachers and Parents to Implement Digital Citizenship in the Classroom or at Home
Digizen
‘Internet Social Networking advice and guidance for young people, parents and teachers.’ It has an emphasis in social networking and cyber bulling. Not very youth friendly, more geared to teachers and parents with lesson plans
iSafe
A non-profit foundation that has ‘Internet Safety’ curriculum. There is little free to download. The curriculum seems to be reasonably priced and I am looking into this as a possibility for our school.
BrainPOP
Brainpop has some teacher resources but is mainly a great place for students to explore digital citizenship. It has a variety of games and lessons for them to go through. Most is free for students to use once they are signed up and SCOE has given teachers accounts.
Common Sense Media
This is the main one! The best collection of teacher resources and lesson plans. It includes scope, sequences and standards. It is more for teachers however and not for students to go online to.
Edmodo
This is a branch off of commonsense media. They partnered with Edmodo to make teacher tool kits. SCOE uses this site as ‘proof’ of having cyber safety curriculum and to get their e-rate.
Digital Citizenship: Using Technology Appropriately
This site doesn’t look very professional but does seem very well connected. They have published with ISTE and its main author, Mike Ribble has published a few articles on digital citizenship. Teacher and parent resources, not kid friendly.
Digital Citizen
California School Library Association and California State University Long Beach created a blog with six modules for digital citizenship. Not the best but interesting!
Cable in the Classroom
This site is very visually appealing. However, it is created by ‘the cable industry’ It seems to have some great links and some solid lesson plans but I worry about the connection it has.
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