Media Revolutions

• Defining Decades With Media Events

• The Media and World War II-Read All About It

• Make Me Proud

• Media Literacy:  History or Hollywood

• The Truth and Nothing But. . .

• Medicating the Stress

• Creating a Newspaper:  Focus on Historical Validity

• Responsible Reporting

• Stories from the Civil Rights Movement

• Media Explorations

• A Step into Black History

• The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:  Graphic Commentary in America Between World Wars

• Yesterday and Today:  Creating an Online Historical Magazine

• Editorials that Elicit Effective Essays

The purpose of my unit is to trace how the news media changed and evolved throughout each decade of the twentieth century. I hope to demonstrate how each decade developed its own personality such as " The Roaring 20s" or "The Fabulous 50s." We will compare and contrast how the news was reported during the various decades, and show how sometimes, the reporting actually influenced the event.

I am currently teaching Communications and Science to Grade 5. One of the stories in our McMillan/McGraw-Hill reading text is "New Providence" which visits a mythical city in 1910, 1935, 1955, 1970, 1980, and 11987. Since fifth graders have a very limited historical background, I will help trace the history of each decade with them. I will use my own personal research and memories of each decade.

I feel that my students will be able to meet the portfolio requirements of two personal narratives, a response to literature, and a report by choosing their own decade to research. Each group will choose an event, invention, and personality that was germane to their decade. While proceeding with these activities, the students will be able to meet all of the Communication Standards as well as some of the Science and Citizenship Standards. In addition, some of the books they read while completing their research will contribute to the twenty-five book requirement of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
                                

This curriculum unit is designed for middle school students and is specifically targeted for sixth grade English Language Arts students. The unit teaches students about the history of World War II by employing newspaper articles and radio broadcasts from that era. Since the major medium of that time was newspapers, students will report on events of the war by incorporating those events into a classroom production of a newspaper. In addition, students are given guidelines for interviewing World War II veterans and are directed to online and print resources that will complete their understanding of the war. By doing this, the unit will also give students an opportunity to polish their research skills.
                             

Make Me Proud
By Margaret A. Foster

In a world of media-precocious children, it becomes harder and harder to relate certain character-building habits to them. In this curriculum, I try to make these lessons two-fold by utilizing historical (both past and present) information that will address pride in who they are as a race of people, coupled with the district’s writing standards. The lessons address analyzing and knowing the effects certain individuals have made on our society, as well as, prepare students to complete papers for oral presentation or publication.
                           

In the 21^st Century students are bombarded with information. All forms of media have agendas and influence our children’s thoughts and perceptions. It is the responsibility of educators to provide children with the tools for critical thinking.

This unit is prepared for the high school social studies or language arts teachers. The lessons will focus on analyzing "Hollywood’s" effect on our interpretation of history, using the technique of comparing secondary sources to evidence found in primary sources. The results will demonstrate that historical films may intentionally or inadvertently present an altered interpretation of actual events. Then they will learn the strategies to become independent thinkers in this information age.
                           

The Truth and Nothing But…
By Julie S. Gillis
Burgwin Elementary

This unit plan will provide an opportunity for students to explore print media, analyze the differences between fact and fiction, research different types of advertising, determine what is important and unimportant information, and produce a class newspaper that demonstrates their understanding of the workings of the media. The unit is divided into two main sections. The first deals with the general make-up of a newspaper. The students will explore primary and secondary sources, fact and opinion, and advertisements as they are seen in today’s world. They will develop a simple classroom newspaper to apply what they have learned in this first section of the unit. In the second section of the unit the students will explore many of the same components they studied in part one but they will focus their newspaper on historical events from the Revolutionary War. They will develop news articles pertaining to the Revolution as well as advertisements, letters to the editor and personal profiles. They will be required to use a variety of sources for their information and a variety of techniques in presenting this information.
                                  

Medicating the Stress
Elyse L. Karpa
Westinghouse High School

Medicating the Stress is an educational unit developed to increase the awareness of stress-related issues among adolescence through media. It provides an opportunity for students to acquire knowledge and skills in recognizing the debilitating consequences of stress such as: depression, alcoholism, neglect, addiction, etc., when teens/parents choose to use certain behaviors and/or substances to cope with their stress. Through film, and other classroom activities, the students will develop a keen awareness of the effective and ineffective ways of addressing their stress. They will have a deeper understanding of how to recognize unhealthy patterns of behavior both within themselves and others. The students will be given helpful strategies they will be able to use throughout their lives. These strategies will also serve as a constant reminder of how important it is for them to alleviate as much stress from their daily routine as possible to develop a healthier lifestyle. This is what will enable them to live healthier, happier lives.
                                   

The focus of this unit plan is a comparison among television, print, radio and Internet media and the perceptions we are fed about history. The intended audience is 10^th grade English students but it could apply to any secondary English or history class. Ultimately, with the knowledge gained about journalism and the media, the students will create their own historically accurate newspaper, television news report or Internet web page. A historical perspective is utilized with events from WWII so the students have a topic to trace through time.
                                   

Angela Mazza The object of this unit is to teach students how to gather information, cite sources and verify information for readers. Journalists report facts that citizens should know in order to be informed about their government and the policies and legislation that affect them. Issues that concern the environment, health, technology, education, transportation have consequence for all Americans. However, many people believe that news lacks credibility and is primarily entertainment. And, for convenience’s sake, a few in the media have helped us to believe that.
                         

This curriculum unit focuses on the civil rights movement in America and how it was reported and interpreted to the American people, using the Montgomery bus boycott as a starting point. Students will access print and non-print media to learn about the civil rights movement. They will interview people who were witnesses to the civil rights movement, and compare their stories with what they have learned through various media accounts. This unit has been designed to be used with secondary Learning Support students, but suggestions for adaptation for mainstream classes and other educational settings are included. An extensive bibliography is included to help both teachers and students in their research into this important era in American history.
                                 

This curriculum unit is standards-based and rich in areas of reading, writing, and speaking. The unit affords opportunities to work with rubric-specific assignments.Students are able to take ownership of this unit by creating and presenting a journal written in the perspective of a 1960’s civil rights movement participant.
                    

A Step into Black History
By Terri Settnek

This curriculum unit is on Black History. This unit is meant for a middle school language arts class, preferably one that is a block class of reading and language arts that is ninety minutes in length. In this unit students are required to research, write, and perform a Black History talk show. They are also required to participate in an acting workshop prior to the performance of the talk show. In all, this curriculum unit will take at least one month to complete. Students use their reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. The lessons it contains are a perfect way to celebrate Black History Month.
                       

The purpose of this U.S. History unit, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Graphic Commentary in America Between World Wars, is three-fold. The first purpose is to engage mainstream students in examining, comparing and contrasting American History through editorial cartoons and graphic art of the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Graphic commentary depicting existing and changing American customs will be examined using six social studies themes and selected universal principles. In addition, these images can be studied with additional sources from this unit along with existing supplemental resources provided in the district’s curriculum. The second purpose is to draw conclusions from this period regarding the health of American democracy as determined by the degree of involvement of all its citizenry. This will coincide with the work of particular activists advocating for political, cultural, economic, diplomatic and/or social improvements. The third purpose involves students demonstrating their knowledge and impressions of these American images and practices through journal entries, a persona writing, a five paragraph essay, a 12"x12" collage reflecting their essay, an oral presentation, and a collaborative class art project. Through writing, speaking, cooperative learning, and visual arts opportunities, students can illustrate the relationship between modern life in the 21^st century and historical events from the Roaring 20’s and the Great Depression/New Deal era of the United States.
                                   

Yesterday and Today -- Creating an Online Historical Magazine
Dr. Bernadine M. Srocki

In this curriculum unit, the students will be building a bridge from the past to the present by collecting oral histories, expanding their knowledge of historical events, writing feature stories, and publishing their stories in a web site on the World Wide Web. This online historical magazine will be a means of sharing stories and showing how those stories are influenced by events in history. It truly will be a way of creating a global classroom -- opening the doors for students to broaden their knowledge base and share what they have learned with the world.
                             

The objective of this unit is for the students to be able to write persuasive essays and informative essays for the media and to be able to transfer this skill into other writing genres. The method that I plan to use is to first have the students read the "Letters to the Editor" in the Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh Courier, and/or the Oliver Bear Facts for content, style, and persuasiveness and to then write persuasive essays themselves in the form of letters to the editor, using the skills that they have learned. I also hope that through the examination of current events, the students will become more interested and more conversant in world affairs.