Several of us librarians developed a lesson plan today on Presidential Elections and detecting bias in text and images. It is geared toward grade 5 but could certainly be used for higher grades.
American Association of School Libraries: Standard 1: Inquire
1.1 Skills
1.1.1 Follow an inquiry-based process in seeking knowledge in curricular subjects,and make the real-world connection for using this process in own life.
1.1.6 Read, view, and listen for information presented in any format (e.g., textual,visual, media, digital) in order to make inferences and gather meaning.
1.1.7 Make sense of information gathered from diverse sources by identifying misconceptions,main and supporting ideas, conflicting information, and point of view or bias.
1.1.9 Collaborate with others to broaden and deepen understanding.
Objective: Students will be able to recognize bias in print and electronic sources.
Essential Questions: How do you evaluate a source of information for bias?
Materials: Magazines, abc-clio.com/ElectionReference printouts, campaign literature and websites, editorial pages and news articles from newspaper. Each type of resource is placed at a different table.
Anticipatory Set: Show ads for each presidential candidate on United Streaming, elicit from students signs of bias in language, image, and sound. (i.e., words, lighting, background music, etc)
Activities: Break students into groups of three to five. Each group is assigned a table with a particular resource (choose which and how many from how large and your class's level). Each group must come up with three to five examples of language of bias from their source.
Differentiated instruction: For visual learners and non-readers, provide picture prompts (for example, a frowning, grainy picture of a candidate from opponent's literature compared with smiling, clear picture from candidate's own campaign); Spanish language materials where available, and material with a variety of reading levels.
Closure: Each group presents one or two examples from their findings.
Photo source: http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/johnmccain/ig/John-McCain-Pictures/Palin-Boosts-McCain.htm
Ha, and you readers were expecting an anti-Palin diatribe about her attempts at book censorship. Stay tuned for that one.
2 comments:
All this inquiry into knowledge stuff - sure sounds like some crypro Democrat plot :)
Howard
Yes, we believe that good thinkers are less likely to be swayed by Republican drivel :)
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