by Frank W. Baker
Last week, I returned to Columbus Ohio, where OELMA, the state school librarian’s organization, recruited school library media specialists for a day-long workshop. But this workshop was different.
OELMA has been one of the strongest supporters of media literacy education in the past several years, making space and time at its annual conference to showcase the importance of media literacy both inside and outside the school library.
OELMA’s president, Susan Yutzey, told me that a hands-on media literacy workshop would mean more if we had members actually writing lesson plans, and putting those plans into action. So that’s what we did.
Frank Baker with school librarians writing media literacy lesson plans in Columbus, Ohio.
The gathered participants, after hearing me elaborate on media literacy, and its place within Common Core, were introduced to the American Association of School Librarian’s Lesson Plan Database. They received instructions on how to contribute their plans to the database, and then worked mostly in grade band groups to begin the process of writing their lesson plans. (For my part, I hovered from group to group challenging them to think about including activities which would engage young people in both analyzing and creating media messages.)
I am pleased to say that these first ever media literacy lesson plans will be posted and available for all to see later in August.
I can think of no better way to promote media literacy than to have ready made lesson plans available for educators to review and consider using.
For more information, please feel free to contact me, Frank Baker: fbaker1346@aol.com
