Intermediate Senior Social Justice Resources

"In this lesson students consider the meaning of the words “bias” and “prejudice” and consider how bias may be found even at the level of individual words due to connotation. Students are introduced to the key media literacy concept that media contain ideological messages and have social and political implications in considering why it is particularly important to consider possible bias in news reporting. The key concept that each medium has a distinct aesthetic form is introduced as students learn about the “inverted pyramid” structure of news reporting and consider how this may lead to bias. Students then evaluate a variety of news sources with regards to the degree of bias and then demonstrate their understanding of the concept by creating an intentionally biased news report."

"In this lesson students consider diversity representation in video games by identifying examples of diversity in the games they play, comparing their findings to statistics on diversity in the Canadian population. They then learn about the concepts of stereotyping and othering and the media literacy key concepts that “media communicate values and messages and have social implications” and “each medium has its own aesthetic form.” Students then study different video game genres and discuss how form and genre are related to diversity portrayal. Finally, students create a design for a video game that will communicate to another player some unique aspect of their own experience."

"In this lesson students consider how well their favourite TV shows, movies and video games reflect the diversity of Canadian society. Students are introduced to the media education key concepts that «media are constructed to represent reality» and “media communicate values and messages”, and learn about the constructed nature of media products, how media «re-presents» people, ideas and events from a particular viewpoint, and what the possible consequences of under-representation and inaccurate portrayals of diversity might be. Next, students learn about Canadian voluntary industry codes on diversity portrayal and consider whether they should be applied to other media. As a summary activity, students take a stand on a diversity issue relating to media and write a Letter to the Editor."

Students are introduced to the idea of “privilege” in relation to diversity and how it applies to media. They then look at a checklist of media related privileges to help them understand the concept.

In this lesson students learn about the history of blackface and other examples of majority-group actors playing minority-group characters such as White actors playing Asian and Aboriginal characters and non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.

Includes a variety of resources such as UDL and "Beautiful Differences" (2014)