Modern education is focused on building the so-called “super skills” of the 21st century, part of which are communication and digital skills, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. In this sense, the development of media literacy is closely linked to the formation of these skills as a component of functional literacy.
When teaching a foreign language, it is very important for me to make students aware of its role as a tool for meaningful communication, for self-expression, for representing the environment in which they grow up, but also for learning about a new and different culture, traditions and world view, for forming attitudes on various socially significant issues. This implies creating opportunities for interaction, teamwork, research, exploration, creativity and sharing. An important condition here is that children be conscious and ethical consumers of information through which they navigate and understand the world around them. This is why I am so grateful to have been part of the trainings organized by the Media Literacy Coalition, as they have enabled us to discover how, without diverting the focus from the specific objectives of a particular subject, we can combine them with a consistent and continuous building of skills – to research information from different sources and in different languages; to check and evaluate the credibility of information and to orient whether a particular source is reliable enough; to be aware of rights in the media space, including
Last but not least, the possibility of formative assessment in the development of the components of media literacy is also important, which is a prerequisite, through the encouragement of hard work and constructive guidance, to create a positive attitude and motivation for further work in this direction.
Deljana Borisova, senior teacher of English at primary stage, “Panayot Volov” Secondary School – Shumen
Winner of the competition “Media Literacy through my subject” with a lesson plan on Spring holidays and customs in Bulgaria in DigComp area.
Titla image: undrey / Canva
[translated automatically from the original in Bulgarian]