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Lesson Background: Exploring and identifying perspectives in civic issues and current events
Lesson Goals & Essential Questions
T1: Transfer Goal(s):
 Recognize, respect, and cultivate different perspectives
 Differentiate between objective information and opinion
 Identity bias in any situations to obtain truth
U1: Corresponding Meaning Goal(s)
 Understand others have a perspective
 Learn about their ability to cultivate their own perspective
 Understand the importance and impact of their perspective
Q1: Corresponding Essential Question(s)
 Who has a perspective?
 Can I have a perspective?
 Why should I have a perspective?
 What can I do with my perspective?
Lesson Rationale
The Lesson Rationale of Lesson 5 is to address the student’s Prior Knowledge. In How
Learning Works, Mayer states that student’s prior knowledge can either help or hinder learning. Many students will have heard of bias, satire, conservative, and liberal perspectives. In addition, many students probably watch the popular Stephen Colbert.
Therefore this lesson is to make sure that the student’s prior knowledge is not “inactive, insufficient, inappropriate, or inaccurate” (p.14). Since the students are surrounded by media and undoubtedly have prior knowledge, this lesson is centered around shifting that knowledge from hindering to helpful through making it “activated, sufficient, appropriate, and accurate”. (p. 14)
Lesson Fit
Once the students have practiced scanning the news environment for articles related to their topics, this lesson increases student’s media literacy skills by teaching them key concepts related to perspective in media.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the lesson, students will:
S1: Skill(s)

Lesson [#]: [Lesson Title] 2
 Identifying stakeholders in a given issue or event
 Developing a unique perspective on an issue or event
D1: Disposition(s)
 Motivated to identify perspectives in media
 Inspired to develop their own perspective on civic issues and current events
Key Messages
By the end of the lesson, students will know:
K1: Students will know key terms that encourage media literacy
K2: Students will know the difference between news and opinion
K3: Students will acknowledge bias in the media
K4: Students will understand the use of satire in media
K5: Students will recognize the presence of liberal and conservative perspectives
Key Terms
TERM
Perspective
News
Opinion
Bias
Satire
Conservative
Liberal
DEFINITION
One’s side of a story
Current Information about what is happening in the world
What someone thinks of a situation or person
When someone lets what they think affect their actions
Using humor to exaggerate opinions
A perspective of the Republican Party
A perspective of the Democrat Party
Materials
• Computer with projecting capabilities
• Ten articles on a relevant topic
Teacher Preparation
Describe how the teacher should prepare for the lesson, if needed. This will help to describe this:
• The teacher should pull up the videos prior to the lesson for convenience.
• For Map the Buzz, the teacher should find 10 articles on a certain subject that explore a variety of perspectives.
90-Minute Lesson Breakdown
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TIME
(MINS)
ACTIVITY/
STEP
Student
Introduction
EXPECTED STUDENT
RESPONSE
Students introduce themselves
EXPECTED TEACHER
RESPONSE
EVALUATION
Teacher facilitates Were the students and teacher introduced?

Lesson [#]: [Lesson Title] 3
5
5
5
10
10
15
10
Any
Remaining
Time
Lesson
Introduction
Perspective
Brainstorm
Example
Bias
Satire
Common
Perspectives in
Media
Map the Buzz
Understand the lesson is on perspective
Learn the difference between audience and author
Students brainstorm definition of perspective
Students watch two videos and discuss differences
Students will hear an example of bias and generate other examples of bias in their lives
What Stephen
Colbert clip
Watch two videos and discuss the differences
Apply the concepts of Perspective,
News, and Opinion to articles
Introduce the topic Was the topic introduced?
Teacher could give an example of an author and an audience (like this lesson)
Teacher lists students responses on board
Teacher shows video of “News”, teacher shows video of “opinion”
Teacher will explain concept of bias and ask for any examples students can think of
Facilitate discussion on
Stephen Colbert clip
Show the students the two videos and facilitate a discussion
Facilitate the discussion by asking the students the listed questions
Do the students understand the relationship between audience and author?
Do the students understand the difference between news and opinion?
Do students understand how the videos represent examples of news and opinion?
Do students understand what bias is? Do students understand intentional bias
(opinion) vs. unintentional bias?
Do students understand satire and how it relates to opinion?
Do the students understand two common perspectives in media: democrat and liberal?
Can the students accurately apply the learned concepts to articles

Lesson [#]: [Lesson Title]
Lesson Body
I. Lesson Introduction
 Now that you all have your articles from Research Day, we are going to explore the concept of “perspective” in media.
 Remember when we explored the different ways news is presented? Now we are going to explore different “sides” in the media.
II. Perspective
 For each piece of news, there is someone presenting the information and someone
(you) reading the news: the audience.
 Therefore there is an audience and an author.
III. Brainstorm
 Ask the class: What does perspective mean? o Listen for: opinion, side, what someone thinks
 Everyone presenting the news has a perspective. However, they might hide it a little or a lot.
 There is a difference between NEWS and OPINION. While someone presenting the news is trying to be objective and fair, they might let their perspective influence what they are saying. This is bias.
 When someone is stating their perspective on something using facts it is called
OPINION.
 Both NEWS and OPINION use perspective in different ways.
IV. Example
 Here is an example of News: o
 Ask the class: Do you think the person presenting this let their perspective influence what they were saying?
 Here is an example of Opinion: o
what they were saying?
 Ask the class: Do you think the person presenting this let their perspective influence
V. Bias
 When someone is trying to be objective, but lets their perspective on something influence the story they are telling, that is called BIAS.
 For example, if you got in a fight with your sibling and were telling your parent about the fight, but you were only telling them the bad things your sibling did, and not the bad things you did, this would be bias. You were not telling the whole story in an objective way.
 Ask the class: Can you all think of other examples of bias?
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Lesson [#]: [Lesson Title] 5
VI. Satire
 Ask the Class: Does everyone know who Stephen Colbert is? We are going to explore why Stephen Colbert is funny.
 Stephen Colbert is an actor who hosts a show on Comedy Central called The Colbert
Report .
 We’re going to watch a clip on Ebola. o http://www.hulu.com/watch/705590#i1,p15,d1
 Ask the class: Is this news or something else?
 This is called satire. o Even though people aren’t always using satire, people often take facts and use them to make and share an opinion about something. This is what
Stephen Colbert is doing, but he is also adding humor. Stephen Colbert is showing that he thinks something is wrong (his opinion) using actual facts and adding humor.
VII. Common Perspectives in Media
 There are common perspectives in media.
 Two main perspectives are CONSERVATIVE and LIBERAL.
 There are two main groups of people in the United States that have similar beliefs and ideas on how the country should be run. o Republicans and Democrats
 A lot of times these perspectives influence the news. We are going to watch two clips.
One conservative (Republican View) on Ebola and one liberal (Democrat view) on
Ebola. Keep in mind the differences and we will discuss these different perspectives.
 The issue is potential travel bans to block people from West Africa traveling to the
United States. o Conservative

o Liberal


Ask the Class: o o o
What is different about these videos?
How does perspective play a role in these videos?
How does bias play a role in these videos?
VIII. Map the Buzz
 We are going to take these 10 articles and “map the buzz” on the selected topic.
 This means we are going to organize what other people are saying about this topic.
 Here is a list of questions we are going to address for each article: o Who is the author? o What is the source? o Is this NEWS or OPINION?
 If NEWS, is it objective or is there BIAS?
 If OPINION, what is the author’s opinion? o Is there satire in this piece? o What is this article saying about the issue? o Is the article covering one perspective or two perspectives?

Lesson [#]: [Lesson Title] o What is my perspective on this issue? o Why is what I think important?
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