Sessions

Generating Ideas and Paragraph Writing in Media Literacy Education

In media literacy education, students are encouraged to interpret the messages that are delivered in media. This requires careful observation of media sources and analysis of the meanings of these observations, which requires students to engage in critical thinking in order to generate ideas. In this presentation, a critical thinking approach to paragraph writing in a media literacy education course will be introduced. This approach includes a pre-writing activity in which students write about their background knowledge on the topic of each lesson. Then students make careful observations of advertisements and take notes of these observations. These notes, in turn, are analyzed in group discussions to share their interpretations of the intended messages of the advertisements. Students then use ideas from their discussions to synthesize a logically organized paragraph using their observations as supporting evidence. Doing this, students not only enhance their critical thinking skills, but also learn paragraph writing skills. In this presentation, examples of student work will be presented. Also, suggestions for encouraging critical thinking skills in media literacy activities will be provided.