Media educators base their teaching on key concepts of media literacy, which provide an effective foundation for examining mass media and popular culture. These key concepts act as filters that any media text has to go through in order for us to respond.

To help teachers introduce these to elementary students, MediaSmarts has partnered with Companies Committed to Kids (formerly Concerned Children’s Advertisers) to develop a suite of videos on each of the key concepts. Each video is accompanied by a lesson plan that reiterates the main ideas from the videos and helps students expand and apply what they’ve learned.