Media Nav
Social media isn't going anywhere but young people rarely get taught how to read it critically. This module builds genuine media literacy, helping students decode advertising, separate fantasy from reality and begin thinking carefully about the identity they want to project online.
Lessons
6 lessons in this module.
Introduction to Media Literacy & Social Media
This is the first lesson of the Social Media Investigated: Media Navigator module — a media literacy programme for Year 7. The lesson establishes a Safe Learning Agreement, introduces the concept of media literacy (access, analyse, create), and gives students practical experience deconstructing an advertisement (Kia Exercising Hamsters) to identify text, subtext, and target audience.
Fantasy & Reality
This lesson explores how media blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Students deconstruct a Lego advertisement for fantasy elements, analyse the McDonald's Big Mac Makeover video to understand how food advertising manipulates reality, examine the nature of reality television using The Biggest Loser as a case study, and begin exploring what it means to set boundaries online.
Advantages, Disadvantages & Boundary Setting
This lesson builds on the boundary-setting discussion from Lesson 2 and extends it into a structured exploration of the advantages and disadvantages of social media. Students collaborate to generate their own advantages/disadvantages list, discuss whether social media turns people into performers, and work in small groups on a Social Media Scenarios activity — arranging scenario cards from most positive to most negative and discussing what boundaries would keep people safe.
Benefits of Social Media
This lesson takes a deliberately positive starting point: research shows that beginning with benefits rather than drawbacks opens minds more creatively and leads to more lasting learning. Students explore how social media enhances communication, watch and analyse two videos ("I Forgot My Phone" and "Taking Control of the Trolls"), and work in small groups to create their own personal guidelines for using social media positively.
Creating Identity Maps
This lesson and the following one form a two-part project focused on students reflecting on the online identity they want for themselves. The aim is not to have students carve out their online identity now, but to go through a thoughtful process of considering it alongside their peers.
Presenting Identity Maps
This is the final lesson of the Media Navigator module and of the full Healthy Minds Year 7 programme. The classroom is transformed into a social media platform: students display their identity maps on the walls or tables, rotate around the room to view each other's maps and leave written comments (non-anonymously), then return to read comments on their own map.