I pose this question here so I don't forget it by the time I return to my unit plan. I've spent some time tonight reading my copy of Social Education because I realized the entire issue is related to my unit plan. The article "(Not so) unprecedented: Media analysis of the 2016 presidential race and its historical precedents" has given me great ideas (that I will blog about at length tomorrow) but also left me with a question.
The first paragraph includes a section that says "helping students to develop media literacy skills - the abilities to access, analyze, evaluate and produce media messages - is one way to support habits of inquiry consistent with social studies learning. The C3 Framework makes it clear that social studies teachers must teach students to do close evidence-based analysis of diverse texts, to compare conflicting claims, and to evaluate the point of view and credibility of sources" (194).
This sounds exactly like my unit plan, or at least what I'm aiming to achieve by the end of my planning. So my question is, how do I add this piece about media literacy in my unit plan? It's already there through the standards but do I call it media literacy somewhere within the big ideas section? Is this part of my essential understandings section? And is there an additional proficiency somewhere in the C3 Framework that I need to add now?
This is a great question, Hayley. I believe that you have been integrating it into your plan all along, but it is important to make it more explicit. I think that teaching critical literacy should be a given in all social studies units, so as long as it is explicit throughout your unit, you do not need to name it in any given section. That being said, looking to the common core literacy in social studies standards can give you some language for making for explicit in your unit.
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