These quick and low-prep media literacy activities will help you improve your student’s critical thinking skills, teach rhetorical analysis and persuasive techniques, and even practice public speaking! To me, teaching media literacy goes hand in hand with teaching Secondary ELA. After all, understanding and interpreting a novel, or analyzing an author’s purpose isn’t so different from critically reading a news article or blog post. Media literacy is especially critical if you’re teaching about current events or exploring topics like immigration or social justice in ELA. What is media literacy?  Teaching media literacy is all about helping students develop their critical thinking skills and become responsible consumers and creators of media. Students with strong media literacy skills can:  -definition from medialiteracynow.org Why is media literacy important? Media Literacy moves beyond just teaching students to identify persuasive