Starter Kit for Elementary Library & Information Literacy K-2

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Elementary Library & Information Literacy 3-5

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Library & Information Literacy 6-8

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Library & Information Literacy 9-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for College

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for US History & Government 9-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Global Studies 9-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Economics 9-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Social Studies 6-8

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Science 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Music 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Math 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Health & Consumer Education 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for ELA 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Civics & Government 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Art & Media Studies 6-12

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Elementary Health 3-5

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Elementary All Subjects 3-5

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for Elementary Health K-2

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Starter Kit for All Subjects K-2

This guide gives users a brief overview of our approach (question-based media decoding) and materials (e.g., lessons) available for free from the Project Look Sharp website for a particular level and subject.

Demonstration Video: January 6, 2021: Newspaper Front Pages

Middle School teacher, Mary Kate Longeran, leads her students through a decoding of domestic and international newspapers - using the Project Look Sharp lesson: “Storming the Capital” - to analyze media construction and bias in news coverage. (Total Time: 8:57) Published 2023

Demonstration Video: Gender Stereotypes and Google Algorithms

Middle School teacher, Mary Kate Longeran, uses the Project Look Sharp lesson “Google Image Searches: Do they Promote or Counter Stereotypes?” to lead her students through an analysis of stereotypes and algorithmic bias. (Total Time: 6:10) Published 2023

Demonstration Video: Interpreting Charts of Media Use: Gen Z vs. Boomers

Middle School teacher, Mary Kate Longeran, leads her students through a decoding of charts using the Project Look Sharp lesson “Changing Our Media Habits: The Impact of the Pandemic” – to teach students to analyze and question charts and explore differences in generational media use. (Total Time: 5:15) Published 2023

Demonstration Video: Choosing a Just Right Book

School librarian, Michele Coolbeth from East Syracuse, NY, leads her first graders through analyzing different book covers and text [and drawing their own conclusions about the appropriateness of the book as an independent reading choice] - using our lesson, How Do I Choose? Picking the Right Book for Me.

Demonstration Video: What is Media - Kindergarten

School librarian, Michele Coolbeth, has her students identify media, including in their clothing – and then reflects on the importance of teaching young students to recognize that media is all around them.

Demonstration Video: Who is Family? - Kindergarten

School librarian, Michele Coolbeth, leads kindergarten students through analyzing book covers for messages about the diversity of families - using the Project Look Sharp lesson, “Who is Family?”

Demonstration Video: Wash Your Hands - Kindergarten

School librarian, Michele Coolbeth, has her students reflect on the qualities of different media forms (videos and a poster) while learning how to wash their hands. (Total Time: 2:13) Published 2023

Standards Alignment: National Media Literacy Alliance Joint Statement on Media Literacy Education

This 3-page document briefly summarizes the alignment of media literacy with the core standards for each of the following disciplines: library (AASL + YALSA), technology (ISTE), Journalism (JEA), Early Childhood (NAEYC), Social Studies (NCSS), ELA (NCTE), Math (NCTM), Science (NSTA), and Writing (NWP).

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.

College Level: Hydrofracking, Media and Credibility

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Fingerlakes

This 9 minute annotated video demonstrates constructivist media decoding using the lesson "Exploring the Impact of Hydrofracking on Aquifers," where college students analyze pro and anti-fracking diagrams.

College Level: Farming, Community and Sustainability

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

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Media Construction of Sustainability. Students in this video examine clips from a film and a commercial to decode farming in the US.

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.

Credibility, Information and Science

Designed for secondary science and environmental studies teachers, this 2 hour to full day workshop will explore the role of the internet and other media on our students understanding of information.

Media & Health Issues

Media literacy education is a powerful way to approach the impact of media use and media messages on a wide range of health issues for today’s youth by emphasizing media analysis, critical thinking, and self-expression. This 2-hour to full day workshop can address multiple health issues or focus specifically on one of them, including: nutrition, body image, advertising, alcohol and substance use, smoking, bullying and put-downs, safety, and teen sexuality.

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 Energy Choices: Empowering Students to See Through the Smoke

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

This webinar offers pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support a deeper understanding of how to address issues of bias in media documents about energy choices. Learn to to seek out and use media sources to deepen critical thinking practice about authorship, purpose, credibility and economics.

Where Media Literacy Meets Sustainability Education

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Sustainability: Fingerlakes

The webinar offers educators and teachers-in-training pedagogical techniques and curriculum materials to support constructivist media decoding to help students engage in critical thinking about the complex environmental, economic and social systems that underly sustainability.

Elementary Level: First Contact Between Europeans and Native Americans

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using our lesson, First Contact. Students in this video decode two opposing paintings to understand how Europeans impacted Native American life.

Elementary Level: Decoding Money

Related to kit: Introducing Africa: Critical Thinking and Media Literacy

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Introducing Africa. Students in this video compare two African currencies to the U.S. Dollar to gain insight about cultural differences.

The Impact of Using News as a Primary Source in Classrooms

This article, by a high school senior who was working with Project Look Sharp’s Chris Sperry, explores the use of news as a primary text in a Humanities class to teach students to think critically about the news, world events, and their own perspectives.

RX For an Infodemic: Media Decoding, COVID-19, and Online Teaching

After describing the historical, political and social causes of our viral age of “fake news,” this article explore how constructivist media decoding provides a methodology for addressing the polarization of truth, with examples of how this work can be done in the classroom through face-to-face and virtual learning.

Checking the Facts: Media Literacy and Democracy

By integrating the process of critical questioning of media messages into the everyday classroom curriculum, we can help produce a citizenry with the skills needed to negotiate future threats to truth.

An Assessment of Student Critical Thinking Skills

This describes a high school level assessment of media literacy and metacognitive skills in which students examine a YouTube video, excerpts from an opinion article, and a webpage screenshot about GMOs and answer questions about media messages, authorship, purpose, bias, credibility and how the students’ own biases impact their analysis.

A Deeper Sense of Literacy

Related to kit: Media Constructions of War: A Critical Reading of History

Basic principles and best practices for using a curriculum-driven approach are described, with specific examples from social studies, English/Language arts, math, science, health, and art, along with methods of assessment used to address effectiveness in the classroom. By Cyndy Scheibe, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 48 No. 1, September 2004.

(Not So) Unprecedented Media Analysis of the 2016 Presidential Race and Its Historical Precedents

This article helps teachers to understand how to use media documents from the 2016 presidential race (as well as past campaigns) to critically analyze media messages to teach objectives from the new NCSS C3 Framework for the Social Studies and the Common Core ELA standards for secondary social studies. When students examine election posters, cartoons, and ads they will comprehend that many themes--including xenophobia, income inequality, and women's political power--have been historical mainstays on the campaign trail.

High School Social Studies: Soviet History-Posters

Related to kit: Soviet History Through Posters: A Visual Literacy Kit

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Soviet History Through Posters. Students are led through a decoding of five Soviet government posters from 1918 to 1988, where they apply historical knowledge while practicing media literacy skills.

College Level: 2008 Election Magazine Covers

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Presidential Campaigns

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Media Construction of Presidential Campaigns. Students in this video decode various magazine covers portraying Barack Obama during the 2008 election.

College Level: Decoding "Last Words" by Nas

Related to kit: Media Constructions of Social Justice

An example of leading a class through a constructivist media decoding using a lesson from our kit, Media Construction of Social Justice. Students in this video decode the rap song "Last Words" by Nas to gain insight about prison life and the greater justice system.