How PBS LearningMedia Can Strengthen Students' Media Literacy for Common Core

PBS LearningMedia, a free destination for instant access to tens of thousands of classroom-ready, digital public media resources including videos, games, audio clips, photos, and lesson plans, provides core subject area resources. Included in this resource library are resources that address media literacy skills underlying the basic tenants of Common Core State Standards.

The introduction of the Common Core State Standards explains, “To be ready for college, workforce training, and life in a technological society, students need the ability to gather, comprehend, evaluate, synthesize, and report on information and ideas, to conduct original research in order to answer questions or solve problems, and to analyze and create a high volume and extensive range of print and nonprint texts in media forms old and new.”

This video educast provides a brief sampling of resources in PBS LearningMedia that can support the enhancement of students’ media lit skills in three ways-

Analyzing Media
Evaluating Websites
Exploring Different Types of Media

1. Analyzing Media
Media Literacy | Vote Democracy!
This lesson provides students with an opportunity to critically view and analyze media and the ways images are constructed. Students will hear from the filmmaker himself about his intention behind the film and be able to look at whether or not he was able to achieve his goals.

2. Evaluating Websites
Student Perspectives: Research Outcomes
Students examine suggestions from high school students about how to most effectively use information found on the Internet.

3. Exploring Different Types of Media
Understanding Media: The Inside Story
In this resource students examine how different news media present the news and explore how newspapers, TV, and the Internet can present different views on the same story.

Maps from The World Digital Library
With these primary source resources students explore the role of maps in aiding in our understanding of geography, diverse cultures, and world history by examining a wide variety of maps – from ancient pictorial documents to 20th century maps.

And that is a brief sampling of resources in PBS LearningMedia that can support the enhancement of students’ media literacy skills.

Sign up for PBS LearningMedia, it’s free, and begin to explore over 100,000 resources from across core subject areas and grade levels to support teaching and learning in your classroom.