Five-Day Media Literacy Curriculum

by Renée Garcia

A project funded by the New Mexico Department of Health, Public Health Division,
Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Program (TUPAC).

About 100 sixth graders from the Turquoise Team at Zia Middle School were taught Media literacy lessons in October 2007. Christie McAuley, Director of Curriculum Development from New Mexico Media Literacy Project (NMMLP) gave educational presentations for six days.

The students learned about media literacy, which is the ability to analyze, evaluate, and create media. Media can involve advertising and all forms of communication including movies, television, radio, Internet, and magazines. The students were presented computer slide shows using real advertisements that were slowed down and analyzed for deceptive messages. Students became involved with discussions and projects that made them more aware of how to be healthier and make informed decisions. Then they created and presented counter-ads which took real ads and brought truth to what the products actually could do.

Many alcohol, tobacco, and toy and companies target young people and children in their advertising. They know that youth are open to new habits. Tobacco companies, for instance, know that young people are strongly influenced by what they view and in the past have paid to have their cigarettes in the movies and on television. Today, many characters in major motion pictures smoke even though smoking rates are declining. Ads for cigarettes target young people because they need replacement customers to take the place of those who have died from smoking. Other companies pay to have their products placed in the movies or on television as a hardly noticed, yet effective, form of advertising.

The students learned about different parts of the brain (neo-cortex, limbic, and reptilian) and how advertisers target impulse thinking, the reptilian, so consumers won’t think too long when they make their buying decisions. They also want buyers to make an emotional or a “survival” decision using this same area of the brain. Media literacy helps students observe advertisements more actively and question the messages they watch.

Renée Garcia is a Language Arts teacher at Zia Middle School, 1300 W. University, Las Cruces, New Mexico.  

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