Natural Gas: Water & Climate Impacts

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode an advertisement and a web page for messages about how natural gas extraction impacts fresh water resources.

Poverty: Climate Change & Water Security

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode web pages for messages about the conditions that make people living in poverty extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Drought Causes: Climate Change Impacts

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode web pages messages about the relationship between climate change and droughts.

Watersheds: Stewardship & Climate Change

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode web pages messages about which strategies might be most useful to deal with climate change impacts on human communities.

Climate: Climate Change & Biodiversity

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode webpages for messages about the impact of climate change on ecosystem biodiversity.

Hydrofracking Pros & Cons: Arguing the Case

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode videos for messages about how hydrofracking impacts the biosphere.

Ethanol: Pros and Cons

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode videos for messages about the benefits and costs of using corn-based ethanol as an energy source.

Comparing Renewables: U.S. vs. Global Energy Use

Media literacy and critical thinking activity in which students decode graphs for messages about how the use of renewable energy sources can help to reduce human vulnerability to climate change.

Where Does My Food Come From?

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing videos to discern messages about the production and transportation of food.

The Challenge of Change

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing a passage from Dr. King's book, "Where Do We Go From Here" and letters to the editor on naming a local street for Dr King.

Climate Change, Agriculture & Sustainability

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson reflecting on the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the role of agricultural practices in contributing to climate change.

Transitioning to a Sustainable Future

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson in which students will analyze models for sustainability through the lenses of social justice, climate change, fossil fuel depletion and economic systems and thereafter define and articulate their views on transitioning to a sustainable future.

A History of Global Warming in Science, Politics, and the Media

Media literacy and critical thinking unit using diverse media imagery to teach about how global warming has been perceived by people in the U.S. and how the media has constructed that public perception.

Assessing Carbon Footprints

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing the carbon footprint implications for various products using short readings and "green" advertisements culminating in student reflection on personal consumer choice as it relates to sustainability.

The Precautionary Principle

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing potential costs and consequences of different responses to climate change by comparing brief text selections from four authors.

The Consequences of Global Warming

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing news articles about the impact of global warming on hurricanes, diseases, agriculture, sea level rise, severe weather, freshwater and biodiversity.

What Is Causing Global Warming?

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing conflicting perspectives on the causes for global warming by decoding short excerpts from two films, The Great Global Warming Swindle and An Inconvenient Truth.

Discourse or Disinformation?

Media literacy and critical thinking lesson analyzing conflicting presentations of scientific information about global warming in various drafts of government reports, video and opinion articles .

1968 Humphrey "Some Talk Change" Poster

Media literacy and critical thinking activity analyzing a poster for the Humphrey campaign for messages about target audience.

1932 "Don't Change Now" Poster

Media literacy and critical thinking activity analyzing a poster from the 1932 campaign for Herbert Hoover for messages about candidate imagery.

Briefing: Project Look Sharp's Decoding Media Constructions and Sustainability

Antonio Lopez, in his coda to Greening Media Education, summarizes the complex set of skills needed “to bring ecologically oriented cultural practice into the realm of media education (which) promotes systems thinking, collaborative learning, critical thinking, lifelong learning and digital media literacy.” This article offers cases studies of two Look Sharp lessons, one for elementary age students and another for upper level high school, each of which was designed with these skills in mind as a way to bring Lopez’s vision into practice in the classroom.

High School Science: The Great Global Warming Swindle

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Media Constructions of Global Warming. Students analyze a short video clip from the film The Great Global Warming Swindle, compare the information in the clip with a chart, and reflect on issues of credibility and bias in media representations and our own biases when evaluating information.

Sustainability Education and Media Literacy

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Food, Water, and Agriculture

This article looks at how the topic of climate change can often provoke deep emotions in students, and suggests that instead of shying away, teachers should use media literacy activities to foster discussions of what the future holds. The author stresses the importance of connecting to the emotional lives of students when raising the complex issues around sustainability.

Teaching Media Literacy & Sustainability for Younger Learners

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Lower Elementary

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding of how to use media documents that: support content teaching about water quality, climate change and hunger, introduce media production as a way to deepen media literacy awareness, and encourage core subject integration of ELA, math, science and social studies.

Teaching about Climate Change Using the Tools of Media Literacy

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding for how to use a wide variety of media documents that: - Support content teaching about climate change - Examine media representations of global warming related to media literacy concepts of credibility, bias and impact - Encourage strong sense critical thinking by asking questions about all media messages, not just those with which we may disagree.

Media Constructions of Presidential Campaigns

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Presidential Campaigns

The webinar offers high school educators and teachers-in-training pedagogical techniques and free curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding of how to use a wide variety of media forms across the historical spectrum - media from 19th century portraits, songs and handbills, to 21st century websites, twitter and email - to study historical context and to question their credibility.

Constructivist Media Decoding in the Social Studies: Leveraging the New Standards for Educational Change

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Presidential Campaigns

This article explores the role that media analysis can play on educational reform tied to the new NCSS C3 Framework for the Social Studies and the Common Core ELA standards for secondary social studies. It uses examples from media decoding activities on the Project Look Sharp website tied to specific standards. It also explores professional development tools that support methodological shifts towards inquiry and assessments of critical thinking skills. By Chris Sperry, The Journal of Media Literacy, Vol. 62, pg. 46-54, 2015.