We taught this lesson at Beech Mountain Elementary School located in Avery County, North Carolina.  The lesson was taught to Ms. Aldridge’s second and third grade combination class.  The lesson went very well and lasted an hour, but we could have gone even longer with the lesson.  The students were completely engaged in the lesson and activities.  We had to get each student to use his or her prior knowledge to brainstorm about media.
     During the beginning of the lesson, we asked the students what is media?  One student said, “media is the newspaper.”  This comment sparked ideas from other students, and they were able to tell us that the television and magazines are examples of media.  We talked to students about the media to help those who may not completely understand the concept of media.  The students who volunteered were able to tell us something about the media in our society.  We had the students sit on the floor with us for the next segment of the lesson.  We discussed the difference between past and present, so the students would understand the next part of the activity.  We laid down two cards on the floor, one with “past” written on it and the other with “present” written on it.  Then the class was shown a variety of images that were cut from magazines and downloaded from the Internet.  Each image was held up for the students to see, and we had them vote if they thought the picture was from the past or from the present.  All of the students participated and contributed insightful comments.  The students were giving sufficient reasons to support their choices.  For example, one student placed an actress in the “present” category due to her hairstyle.  The students made many other observations about the pictures.
     While we were separating the pictures, we ask the students higher level thinking questions.  The students told us that if a person is skinny, then they are considered beautiful.  If the person has long hair, wears tight clothes, wears his hat backwards, and if he plays some kind of sport.  The students were then asked, if a person is not skinny, do you think he or she is ugly?”  Some of the students really thought about the question before they answered it.  Many students agreed that just because someone is overweight does not mean that he or she is not pretty.  They told us that to change society’s view of what is considered pretty, “there should be more pictures of overweight people in magazines.  Students observed the differences between pictures from the past and the present.  They noticed the skin color, the clothes, the body size, and the setting in the pictures.  The pictures of what people value in other societies left them confused.  They were unsure why someone would value that kind of clothes or a particular person.  The way a person looks does not determine if he or she would succeed or how intelligent the person may be.  This led to a discussion that was not part of our plan.  The students discussed the fact that what really matters is how a person is on the inside not the outside.  The students were asked to tell what they thought the body image of the future would be.  Some of the students were able to answer this question comfortably, while others struggled to answer the question.  They had a hard time imagining what they thought about the future body image.
     We were able to achieve many of the goals we set in our original lesson plan.  The students used what they had seen on television to interpret some of the pictures we used during the lesson.  They were able to explain the concepts in their own words.  They referred to “in style” or “cool” instead of “value.”  The students made up their own sentences to go with their illustrations of the future body image.  We were able to use media and technology to enhance and present our lesson.  The images were cut from magazines and downloaded from the Internet.  The students recognized how powerful the media was in our society.  They mentioned that many of the clothes that are “in style” are seen on television.  They see many skinny models in the magazines and not many overweight models.  They struggled with bias and stereotypes during the lesson.  The students were able to tell us that the portrayal of body images can be misleading.  Society believes that we should be skinny, because the models are skinny.  The students realized that had the power to change the stereotypes they get from the media.  The self-esteem of students in the class was raised by the lesson.  A few of the children, who were overweight, realized they were important and beautiful.
     We did experience some difficulty presenting the lesson.  The students were not familiar with images from other cultures.  They did not place the pictures of the African Americans, Chinese, or Hispanics under the appropriate heading.  They placed many of these images in the past, even though they were really from the present.  We realized that the students were not exposed to people from other cultures.  The school lacks cultural diversity and this may contribute to the problem.  The students struggled finding descriptive words besides pretty or ugly.  We had to spend more time helping them enhance their vocabulary with other descriptive terms.  A few of the students were not able to make up a body image from the past, but used what society currently values.  Since we talked about the fact that it is what a person is like on the inside that really counts, several of the students portrayed images that supported this statement made during the lesson.
     If we were going to do this lesson again, there are several changes that we would make to the lesson.  We would integrate this lesson with health, and talk about the feelings of people.  We would have more examples of images from other cultures and plan to spend more time talking about what other cultures value.  We would definitely have the students use new vocabulary words to describe pictures, such as bias or stereotype.  We would focus more on how to be more critical of the media, and developing their own opinions.  We want them to see that they can have an opinion that differs from the media, and that opinion is completely acceptable.