Media�How are women and men�portrayed in the media?

Introduction

• Seventh Grade

-awkward

-not a kid, but not an adult

-struggle to belong

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The Media

•  2012: 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week).  
• Because of ‘Media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.
• Media is everywhere, present in every household
• Kids see it and believe it

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What If…

• What if we could help our students through this hard time while they are in school?

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*We have designed an integrated unit to help students realize that their feelings are universal*

Week 1 – How the media portrays men and women

Week 2 – Effects the media has on our self-esteem

Week 3 – Cultural relevance

Week 4 – Empowering ourselves and others: an application of everything learned

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Week 1

• Language Arts
• Overview of how women and men are shown in the media; things aren't always as they seem
• Analyzing TV commercials aired during the super bowl; portrayal of men and women
• Revising Disney stories and the message they are sending
• Taking a closer look at magazines, magazine covers
• Looking deeper into media in politics; how pictures can elude feelings

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Quote of the week: “The media is the most powerful entity on Earth”- Malcolm X

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Photo shopping

-What are some of the changes you notice from the original picture?

-Why do you think these changes were made?

-What does this say about celebrities?

-What does this say about media?

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Disney Princes

• What do all of these princes have in common?
• What type of message are these pictures sending to its viewers?

What are some examples in the story that support these messages?

Are there any that refute it?�

Magazine Covers

What do you notice about these magazine covers? About colors of hair, skin, eyes, race?

Political Media

• The same image, two different broadcasters
• What can you infer about these broadcasters
• Do colors elude feelings? What do you feel when you see lighter colors? Darker colors?
• What could some feelings be associated with each picture?

Activities

• Group Discussions
• Written responses
• Analyzing with a critical eye songs, pictures, commercials, stories, articles etc
• Creating commercials
• Writing articles for magazines

Science�

• Learning Inherited traits v.s learned traits, identifying these traits in various forms of media
• Comparing the structure of a cell to the structure to a magazine
• Identifying and explaining ways that science and technology influence lives and careers of people

Social Science�

• Comparing various roles women and men played in a certain time period to those roles that women and men play in current day society
• Analyzing then comparing characteristics on the family structures of each Disney story with America in the colonial periods and 19^th century by creating a Venn diagram
• Students will partake in a debate, one side being a successful graphic artist of photo shopping and a young viewer/reader/consumer.
• Changes in societies stereotypes, student create a collage of what they want to see in magazines v.s what they do see

Math

• Student research statistic data on media, then create their own statistics problem using the information found
• Creating word problems based on costs of commercials for different occasions (Superbowl, Presidential debate etc)
• Tallying and Categorizing topics on their favorite magazines front cover, students come together as a class to graph the topics (Love, Beauty, Sex, Politics, Sports, Health, Celebrity Gossip, Music, Women, Men, Travel & Food, Cars, Weight Loss)
• Each student assigned a year, must research how many men and women were in congress that year and then visually represent-write a paper to accompany their findings.

Week 2

• Language Arts

-Writing in journals about their thoughts on the troubling statistics of young teens’ self-esteem as related to the media

-List of things they like about themselves and things they do well (and analyze why it was hard to make these lists – was this attitude learned? From where?)

-Discussing ads in the media and how they can have a negative or positive impact on teens (as well as discussing “true” beauty- creating their own ad promoting high self-concept in teens and writing a reflection piece along with that)

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Quote of the week: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is inadequate.” Albert Einstein

L.A Cont’d

• Writing (and sending) letters to companies (ad or product) voicing their opinion about the negative or positive image that company is putting out and what impact it has on teens
• Participate in writing kind words about others in their class.
• “Promise cards" - cards that students create to make a promise to themselves to always think positively about themselves, encourage others to do the same, and ways they can do it
• Portfolio of student’s work

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Social Science

• Propaganda in history
• Two speeches by opposing leaders in a war – students will create a propaganda poster trying to convince the “citizens” to be on their side (students will analyze the difference between the two speeches, the language used in each, and how the same events are portrayed differently)
• documentary "Loose Change" to see how different forms of media can present an event in different ways and how the way the media presents a topic influences the way we think about it.

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Science

• Students will be conducting research about anorexia, bulimia, healthy weight loss, and body image and conduct research about how that is connected to the media.
• Poster
• Guest speaker (health professional)

Math

• Graphing, collecting, and analyzing data
• Take samples from classmates and discuss what makes statistics reliable (most statistics are generalizations but what makes them credible? – connect to things we see in the media)

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Week 3

• Language Arts
• -“All the Colors of the Earth” by Sheila Hamanaka
• -Each child's skin color, hair type, and feelings of love and laughter and compares them to something found in nature
• -Students will write a poem and create a self portrait to illustrate their own multicultural beauty

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Quote of the Week: “Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.” Albus Dumbledore/JK Rowling

-“A Ride on Mother’s Back” by Emery and Durga Bernhard

-How people in different countries carry their babies around

-There are many different ways to do something – none of which are a wrong way

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Activities

• Venn diagram to compare the two books
• Similes and metaphors – books will guide this lesson
• Relate what they learned from the texts to the overall unit of empowerment and disempowerment through discussion, focusing mainly on those of other cultures

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Creative Writing

• “Using what we have learned this week in language arts and social studies about other cultures, pretend you are that penny and you are writing an autobiography about your life. Write about all the different places and people you have seen, what people have spent you on, and the different types of clothes (purses, pant pockets, etc) that you have been carried around in. Make sure to pay special attention to what people look like in other cultures, as discussed in social studies. What are some of the beautiful things you have seen? Come up with your own ideas of what your life as a penny has been like, there are no restrictions.”

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Social Studies

Beauty Norms in Other Cultures

-Foot binding, corsets, gauged lips

-1 in 5 women in Seoul has undergone plastic surgery ("In Asia, it's very common for patients to want more Western-looking eyes," -Dr. Malcolm Roth)

-Create a booklet of something they don’t understand about another culture – this will hopefully get them to understand

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Social Studies Cont’d

-Apartheid – “the status of being apart”

-Racial segregation by legislation through National Party gov’t 1948-1994

-Dominance of white people

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The Color of Friendship

Science

• Why do we look the way we do?
• -pigments, nose, eye shape all relates to the environments where our ancestors came from
• -adaptations and human evolution
• -adaptations in animals relate to the environment in which they live
• -2 essays about the animal (KWL): 1^st essay on KW and 2^nd essay on L

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Math

-Skin pigment statistics and data to be represented with graphs

-Help them to understand the data using several different methods of graphing

- Applying what they learn in school to real life needs

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Week 4

• Language Arts
• View documentary “Miss Representation” followed by discussion and writing a letter to a younger person about what they wish they knew at their age (Establishing mentor/mentees)
• Students create a Wordle class collage using the kind words they were described with in week 2, along with that students create a poem about empowerment, embracing self esteem, promoting empowerment etc.
• Students create brochure to get the word out to the public on what they learned from the unit on the how the media (dis) empowers youth and what they can do to overcome this oppression

Quote of the Week: “Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with them.” ― Steve Maraboli

Science

• Students chose one problem they found in the media, converting that problem into the Scientific Method
• Present their “Science Media Project”

Social Science

• Historical Empowerment
• MLK
• Women's Suffrage
• Lesson and Discussion on 5 W’s
• How was this empowerment?
• What were causes for these movements?
• Obstacles? How were these overcome?
• Students then create a Timeline

for each subject

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Math

• Proportions
• Students will create life-size measurements of Barbie and Ken
• Students will then create ratios for each measurement
• Box and Whisker Plot
• Students use the events on the timeline, research the average cost for that event, then use those values to create a box and whisker plot

To Conclude

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”� -Marilyn Monroe

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Take this advice, apply it to your life, and enrich the lives of those around you

What we hope our students have learned...�-Don't let the media brainwash you�-Empower yourself and those around you

Bibliography

• Burke, 1998. Adapted from Y.M. Goodman, D.J. Watson, and C.L. Burke. (1987). Reading Miscue Inventory: Alternative procedures. Kanonah, NY: Richard C. Owens. p. 132-134.
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• Flint, Amy S. (2008) Literate Lives: Teaching reading & writing in elementary classrooms. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Chapter 1,3,4,12.
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• Hollins, Etta. “Challenges, Opportunities, and Possibilities for Learning to Teach in Urban Schools.” Learning to Teach in Urban Schools. 1st ed.Routledge, 2011. 13. Print.
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• Irvine, Jacqueline Jordan. “The Critical Elements of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: A Synthesis of the Research.” Culturally Responsive Teaching: Lesson Planning for Elementary and Middle Grades. . 1st ed.McGraw Hill, 2000. 4-5. Print.
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• Nagin, Carl. “Introduction & Improving Student Writing: Challenges and Expectations.” Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. 6+. Print.
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• Tempel, Melissa B. “Rethinking High-Stakes Standardized Testing.” Pencils Down: Rethinking High Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools. By Wayne Au. N.p.: Rethinking Schools, 2012. 218-19. Print.
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• Tompkins, Gail E.. “Organizing for Instruction.”Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach. . 5th ed.Pearson, 2009. 336-337. Print.

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Any Questions?