Ten lessons on reading media critically — each with a media-analysis task and an exam-style question.
Teaching focus: Define media texts; their purposes (inform, persuade, entertain) and how they shape perception.
Starter sentences: “This text’s primary purpose is to…” · “It targets a… audience by…”
Activity: Bring in one media text each and sort them by purpose and audience.
Teaching focus: Layout, headlines, inverted pyramid and the difference between news and opinion.
Starter sentences: “The headline’s verb choices…” · “Placement on the page implies…”
Activity: Compare two front pages — note headlines, images and priorities.
Teaching focus: Cover codes, feature articles, pull-quotes and the co-constructed ideals of the magazine.
Starter sentences: “The cover’s colour and caption promise…”
Activity: Analyse a cover’s headline, image and layout for the ideal being sold.
Teaching focus: Voice, pacing, sound, interview technique, and how podcasts generate intimacy and authority.
Starter sentences: “The host’s conversational tone…” · “Music and edits mark…”
Activity: Listen to a short episode and note how it builds trust and mood.
Teaching focus: Bulletin structure, presenters, graphics, narration and visual pacing.
Starter sentences: “The opening item signals…” · “Music and graphics frame it as…”
Activity: Watch one bulletin and rank stories by how they are presented as important.
Teaching focus: How media represents groups, and the effects of stereotyping and invisibility.
Starter sentences: “The repeated framing of… reinforces…”
Activity: Log the representation of a group across three media texts.
Teaching focus: The taken-for-granted values that media presents as natural.
Starter sentences: “Beneath its neutrality, the text assumes…”
Activity: Note the ‘unstated norms’ in an advertisement or article.
Teaching focus: Uses and gratifications; how advertisers and demographers build audiences.
Starter sentences: “Constructed for a demographic that values…”
Activity: Profile the imagined audience of two contrasting media texts.
Teaching focus: Editorials, opinion pieces, debate formats and their rhetorical construction.
Starter sentences: “The editorial builds its case by…”
Activity: Write your own editorial, then trace its appeals to ethos/pathos/logos.
Teaching focus: A sustained analytical response to media and a reflective evaluation of your own analysis.
Band 6 checklist: clear framing concept, precise media terminology, sustained judgement, evidence of original reading.
Activity: Write the response, then annotate it with media concepts you deployed well.
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